Stigma towards patients with mental disorders

Introduction: Stigma is not an individual problem or part of a disease but a social problem that have worse consequences than the disorder. Stigma is a world-shaking matter in psychiatry owing to the fact that about ۳۰۰ million clients with mental health problem do not take action for treatment, as they are afraid of being stigmatized and labeled. Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate researches associated with stigma and social discrimination with mental disorders patients. Method: In this review, all searches were done with Persian and English key words such as "stigma, mental disorders, depression, schizophrenia" in Pubmed, BioMed Central, Wiley Library, Science Direct databases ,Google Scholar and Iranian databases such as IranMedex, SID, Magiran. For adequate coverage, articles have been chosen in Persian and English from ۲۰۰۱ to ۲۰۱۵. Results: we have found ۸۳ articles. after assessing them based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, we have selected ۲۹ articles. Most of articles were assessed stigma among all patients with mental disorders in general and schizophrenia patients. Results of this study categorized in four groups such as community' view about mental disorder patients, staffs' view, patients and his/her families' view and stigma-reduction researches. Conclusion: The review of articles shows that stigma is an important reason for unsuccessful treatment. Considering the importance of treatment and follow-up of patients with mental disorders, it seems essential to pay extra attention to the issue of stigma in this group of patients. We recommend that, because to the different ethnicities and lack of sufficient information about the stigma and its solutions in Iran, designing further researches would help to clarify the problem.