Stigma: winners and losers

Four Oscars went to the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind about John Nash. It was a rare and beautifully observed drama about the experience of schizophrenia. It took us into that world and helped us understand both the experience and the reaction of others to it. Successful but a rarity. In straitened economic times such counters to stigma may not be top of the agenda. The stigma of mental illness is a prevalent global issue, perhaps more so in some countries and cultures than in others; therefore, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, national mental health associations and international organisations with mandates for mental health, such as the World Health Organization and the World Psychiatric Association, have an important role, if not duty, to keep up their programmes of anti-stigma activities.