Paper short abstract:

Stigma is one of the 'grand challenges' for the global mental health movement. Interventions in India coming out of psychiatry and public health focus on community education with limited success. What innovative approaches can anthropology contribute to these efforts?

Paper long abstract:

Addressing mental illness stigma is described as one of the 'grand challenges' for the global mental health movement. Amplifying the suffering of the mentally ill and hampering their treatment and recovery, stigma also bleeds into the lives of those around them. Interventions coming out of psychiatry and public health have focused on community education and have had limited success in alleviating the suffering people with mental illness in India. Anthropological and sociological approaches emphasise a theorisation of stigma that it is located in the social to grapple with the moral processes that underpin stigma, and how institutional and structural power can stigmatise and marginalise individuals.

In this paper we use the framework of moral experience to inquire what is at stake in mental illness for individuals, their families, and communities. Focusing on mental illness stigma in India and approaches taken thus far to address it, we ask how an understanding of what matters most in the local worlds of both the stimatised and stigmatisers can be of value in efforts to support the recovery of people with mental illness. How can anthropology's ability to illuminate and hold the complex and messy in view make concrete contributions to public health interventions focused on one-dimensional, simple solutions? What innovative approaches to addressing mental illness stigma can anthropology contribute to the global mental health movement?