Our research

Before kicking off the Time to Change campaign, we surveyed thousands of people to find out what the issues really were, and how we could address them.

Stigma Shout

We surveyed almost 4,000 people with direct experience of mental health problems in our ‘Stigma Shout’ survey. They helped us identify which groups of people cause the most stigma and discrimination and where it’s most likely to take place.

We then took those findings into workshops with over 100 people where we explored the issues in more depth .

The combination of survey and workshops gave us a full picture of people’s experiences of stigma and discrimination – and identified a number of audiences for Time to Change to target.

You can download the full survey report here. But some of the key findings include:

Impact of stigma and discrimination

Nearly nine out of 10 people (87%) reported the negative impact of stigma and discrimination on their lives
Two thirds of respondents said they had stopped doing things because of stigma and discrimination
Two thirds said they had stopped doing things because of the fear of stigma and discrimination

Some of the main areas of life that both service users and carers said were affected by stigma:

Employment
Building new and retaining existing friendships
Being able to join groups and take part in activities within the community
Feeling the confidence to go out and about - to the shops, down the pub
Ability to openly disclose mental health issues
Ability to challenge professionals, be heard by professionals or make changes to treatment

Groups that service users and carers felt shout be targeted with an anti-stigma campaign included:

Immediate and wider family
Friends
Colleagues
Neighbours
GPs

Download the Stigma Shout survey report.

Other sources of research

We also looked at a government survey on Attitudes to Mental Illness.

This survey is carried out annually and served as a benchmark for Time to Change, as well as helping us measure whether attitudes improve or worsen over time.

Some key findings from the May 2008 survey showed:

1 in 8 people would not want to live next door to someone who has had a mental health problem

Nearly 6 out of 10 people describe a person with a mental health problem as “someone who has to be kept in a psychiatric or mental hospital”

One third of people thing people with mental health problems should not have the same rights to a job as everyone else

Only 31% of people think mental hospitals are an outdated means of treating people .

These findings gave us a picture of public attitudes towards mental health problems. There have been some improvements in the Attitudes to Mental Illness surveys carried out since we launched our campaign in 2009. Find out more about progress since the launch of Time to Change.