ABSTRACT
There are many misconceptions about people who receive a psychiatric diagnosis. Surveys show that although people believe that they deserve sympathy and the best possible treatment, a significant and apparently growing minority also believe that they are potentially violent and dangerous, and may pose a risk to others in the community.1 An international study found that ‘schizophrenia’ was ranked fourth of forty diseases in terms of stigma, after rabies, alcoholism and drug addiction.2 This damaging and inaccurate picture is reinforced by the media, where even quality newspapers frequently run headlines such as ‘Schizophrenic raped three’ and ‘Schizophrenic killer given probation’,3 which would rightly be condemned as racist ifthey contained the phrase ‘black man’ instead. In fact, black people, and particularly black men, may be doubly demonised: articles on homicides by psychiatric patients are often illustrated by pictures of black men, although four out of five perpetrators of these crimes are white.4 Such reports are never balanced by less dramatic, but much more representative, announcements such as ‘Psychiatric patient settles peacefully into the community’.
