How services can impact on stigma, a testimonial from a service user.

“I used mental health services from a young age, I very quickly picked up a number of diagnoses relating to neurodiversity, SMI and complex emotional needs. I had always been supported by my closed loved ones to seek mental health support in a way I would do for physical health and was not aware of some of the stigmas relating to mental health until I received these diagnoses. Some of this was from society, the people providing me care or the wider healthcare systems. It left me with feelings of deep shame and a feeling of being unworthy of support and care from services but also in my personal life.

This led to my behaviours perpetuating my sense of difference and loneliness and a difficulty in trusting in or being fully open with services. I had a difficult relationship with alcohol and spent much of my weekends heavily binge drinking and went into my weekdays with a cycle of anxiety, low mood, self-harm and dissociative states, then followed by weekends of binge drinking again… and so on.

When I got to the point of admitting this issue to myself, I made a choice to become clean and sober, mental health services did pick up on this previous cycle following this change and started to discuss my alcohol abuse. I often reflect on what views people hold of those with an alcohol issue and why that hadn’t been picked up on in my care and if my recovery may have started earlier if others had picked up on the cycle I was living in.

Today I live a thriving life in recovery, with a job and family. The stigma’s I experienced stay with me and I still often feel loneliness and shame as a result of this, it can often manifest in me struggling to trust in or open up to healthcare services and also in building friendships in my personal life outside of a recovery agenda. In my professional life, I regularly engage in reflective practice and supervision around the stigma’s and biases I too hold as a result of my experience towards groups of people and I use this to remain accountable to the values I hold personally and professionally but also to be kind to myself in working through my conscious and unconscious biases regularly.”