Fighting stigma is an uphill battle.

[dazed and confused]

Before I was diagnosed with a mental illness I never really considered just how much stigma is out there but now that I'm a part of the community I can see it's pretty much everywhere. The thing is I think a lot of people don't realise that they are stigmatising especially when they use language such as nutjob, psycho, loony, etc. Or when a crime is committed and the perpetrator is called a psychotic killer - with the majority of people probably having no idea what psychosis actually is. They just think that's a scary word and a scary person who has committed a crime so obviously the two go together. How can this kind of stigma be fought especially when the media and TV/movies enables it a lot of the time?

[Southern Discomfort]

Trying to educate the people around us is the best, reasonable way, I think. 1 in 4 for us will experience a mental health problem at some point of our lives, that doesn't sound that scary, does it? 

I do agree though, a little bit dies in me when someone misuses "psychotic" thinking you must be Jason or something. 

[Cerberus]

I sometimes wonder if people mistakenly use psychotic for psychopathic because they don't know the difference.  And yes, education is the key.  Otherwise, the only thing left to do would be to just kill them all, and then it would be work, work, work all the time, and stigma out the wazoo.

So, yeah.

[Flash]

I sometimes wonder if people mistakenly use psychotic for psychopathic because they don't know the difference.  And yes, education is the key.  Otherwise, the only thing left to do would be to just kill them all, and then it would be work, work, work all the time, and stigma out the wazoo.

So, yeah.

I think that's likely.