Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Shame and stigma
People arrive with family stories, cultural rules about mental health and firm views about medication, and none of it shows up unless you invite it. Asking first also spares you arguing with a belief you did not know was in the room. A simple opener does the job: tell me what you already know about this, and what you have heard about it at home.
Speak to him gently so that he may take heed (Quran 20:44). Gentleness is given as the way in when you want someone to actually hear you.
طه
فَقُولَا لَهُۥ قَوۡلࣰ ا لَّيِّنࣰ ا لَّعَلَّهُۥ يَتَذَكَّرُ أَوۡ يَخۡشَىٰ
Speak to him gently so that he may take heed, or show respect.’
Qur’an 20:44read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta-analysis estimated how several kinds of stigma, including personal beliefs, self stigma and what people assume the public thinks, bear on whether people actually seek help. The association held across those categories. The evidence is observational, so it shows that beliefs travel with help seeking rather than proving that shifting a belief shifts behaviour.
Schnyder N, Panczak R, Groth N, Schultze-Lutter F. (2017). Association between mental health-related stigma and active help-seeking: systematic review and meta-analysis.. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
New information gets filed against what someone already believes, so you need to know what that is.
Most of what other people do is about their own day rather than about you. That is easier to hold once you have also admitted that in childhood, sometimes, it genuinely was about you.
Getting your ordinary life a bit calmer is worth doing for its own sake. More sleep, a little more structure, food that is not all improvised. Not perfect, just good enough to work with.
When you have stopped believing you can change anything, the reflex is to avoid and to scroll. What breaks that is not encouragement, it is one small thing actually finished.