• Elizabeth H Flanagan, Rebecca Miller, and Larry Davidson.
• Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, 319 Peck Street, Building 1, New Haven, CT 06513, USA. elizabeth.flanagan@yale.edu
• Psychiatr Q. 2009 Mar 1; 80 (1): 55-64.

BackgroundStigma within mental health settings may be equally detrimental to people with mental illnesses as societal stigma.AimsThis study investigated stigma in mental health settings through a mixed qualitative-quantitative design.MethodPractitioners at a community mental health center indicated (1) their subjective experience of treating people with mental illness, and (2) descriptive features of people with mental illness.ResultsInterpretive phenomenological analysis found that a primary theme across practitioners was the causes and effects of labeling patients, a process practitioners attributed to other practitioners and/or to systemic pressures to "treat the chart" instead of the patient. Beyond symptoms and deficits, practitioners rated people with mental illnesses as "insightful" and "able to recover."ConclusionsThese data suggest that stigma in mental health settings may be due to structural, systemic pressures on practitioners, with practitioners' emphasis on symptoms and deficits as a secondary factor.

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