Research shows ‘alarming rise’ in mental health stigma in England | Mental health
The number of people in England who fear living close to people with mental health problems has doubled to one in seven, which experts warn reflects a “worrying rise in stigma”.
Even if a mentally ill person recovered, one in 10 people said they would not want to live alongside them, according to new research by mental health charity Mind.
The survey, conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, found that only 63% of people were comfortable about mental health services operating in their community rather than psychiatric units, down from 70% in 2015.
The figures showed that 14% of people were afraid of those with poor mental health living in their neighbourhood, up from 8% in 2017, while 16% of people thought mental health services had “downgraded” their neighbourhood, up from 10% in 2019.
The number of participants who agreed that being part of a community is the best treatment for people with mental health problems was the lowest since the research was first conducted in 2008, at 68%.
Dr Sarah Hughes, chief executive of Mind, said: “The rise in stigma is worrying. We have seen a change in language, with people telling us that their family attitudes are changing, as well as increased narratives around benefit claimants and some of the difficult and horrific cases of violence associated with mental illness – a lot of things seem to have come home.”
She said the charity “listens to mental health services facing challenges from neighbours, such as frequent complaints or objections to planning requests or working in inhospitable environments”.
The survey also showed a significant decline in the number of people who correctly believe that people with severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or psychosis, can fully recover. The percentage was 67% in 2019, and is now 53%.
Professor Clare Henderson from IoPPN said the survey showed that although people’s attitudes towards specific individuals with mental illness had improved, their attitudes towards mental illness had generally declined “to baseline”.
She said recent high-profile criminal cases involving mentally ill offenders, such as Valdo Calucani, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and stabbed three people to death in Nottingham in 2023, could have increased stigma.
“There’s this fear about people who are clearly unwell, and there’s been a push toward more coercive care, when really it’s about having the resources to be able to respond to people when they’re in crisis,” she said.
“But if you have a neighbor who is very sick and not receiving treatment, or if you’re on the bus and someone is screaming for no apparent reason and you’re with young children, people get worried. It’s not fair to just say people are ignorant or biased.”
She said that the difficulty of accessing services increases pessimism about the success of treatment. “We asked people: ‘Can drugs be effective? Do people recover?'” She added: “If you don’t see it happening, you won’t answer these questions positively.”
Henderson said “increasingly negative rhetoric around young people with mental health problems” was “downplaying” some conditions, and fueling misconceptions about benefit claimants.
The findings were published as part of Mind’s annual mental health report, which found there were 1.66 million people waiting for community mental health care in England and Wales in the third quarter of 2024-25.
Jenny Tan, 22, a psychology student who waited years to receive treatment for anorexia, said she faced stigma and unfriendliness when she revealed her mental ill health.
“There are a lot of celebrities coming forward now and talking about this. I thought the community was more accommodating and more understanding,” she said. “But when people think about mental illness, they stereotypically think about disorders that are presented as serious in the media, and things that are associated with violence.
“But I think if people really understood what it means to have a mental health condition, their reaction wouldn’t be one of disgust and flight.”