Stigma is a very basic word within the study of sociology that could be described by someone as a harmful mode of negative labelling towards someone else with a differentiating characteristic or attribute such as a form of mental illness or an intellectual disability which can lead to stereotypes, discrimination and even societal rejection possibly further damaging a persons mental and physical state of mind. These people who are suffering from many different types of mental illnesses regularly endure two different kinds of stigmas which include a form of self-stigma where some people with mental illnesses can begin to form negative opinions and stereotypes about themselves due to how they believe the world perceives them, taking on these negative labels as a new part of their identity. The other form of stigma being public or societal stigma where people always tend to fear anything abnormal around them and the unknown. Some 18.5% of the Irish population was recorded as having a mental health disorder, such as anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, depression, and alcohol or drug use, in 2016 (Cullen, P., 2018), now leaving Ireland
s numbers among some of the highest mental health illness rates in all of Europe. This statistic in turn leaves much room for the harmful stereotypes and discrimination to take place in Ireland in all age groups with anxiety and depression becoming more and more popular with younger generations constantly growing in numbers. People with mental illnesses are constantly left to suffer from the negative symptoms of their own illness such as anxiety, depression, hallucinations, insomnia and much more all while continuing to carry the enormous weight that society has forced upon them to carry by themselves created by harmful opinions, stigmas and discrimination (Rüsch, Angermeyer and Corrigan, 2005). All of this personal suffering due to the fact that people tend to fear that which they do not fully understand and that they may have never had any personal experience with any forms of mental illness themselves. Nearly every person in the world will experience some form so stigma at some time in their life but due to the unknown and characteristics of mental illness people focus their attention on it creating negative stereotypes.