Behind our campaign

87% of people with mental health problems recently said that either actual discrimination or fear of discrimination had affected them.

Our campaign aims to tackle this by;

• Raising awareness of the stigma and discrimination that millions of people with mental health problems face every day.
• Changing stigmatising attitudes into acceptance and respect, and beginning to reduce discrimination.
• Creating a new England-wide public space to lead the debate on bringing attitudes on mental health into the 21st Century.

Our campaign is based upon research including;

• Anti-discrimination campaigns worldwide
  We are building on and learning from anti-discrimination campaigns in New Zealand, Scotland and Rethink's two pilot campaigns in Norwich and Northern Ireland.
• Department of Health research
  Data from the Department of Health's (DH) attitudes to mental illness survey gave us an understanding of the attitudes to mental illness of different groups in England.
• Stigma Shout
  We started research with the Stigma Shout survey and workshops which asked people directly affected by mental health problems and carers where they experience stigma and discrimination, who they experience it from and what should be done.
• Audience research
  We carried out interviews with people who the Stigma Shout research and DH data showed could potentially be causing stigma and discrimination. We found this group generally have:

1. Low levels of knowledge about mental health problems.
2. High levels of fear.
3. Mental health discrimination is an invisible issue for them.