The Saints And The Rednecks Summary

In the article “Stigma of mental ill health is 'worse than the illness”, Jeremy Lawrence talks about how people who are mentally ill are becoming discriminated against by ordinary people and that not a lot of people are helping or paying close attention to these people who are in desperate need of help. The mentally ill people are stigmatized because their illness. This author claims that people are deviant due to their irrational behaviors in treating the mentally ill people without care or sensitivity. They are deviant because they are making the situation worse by comparing them to celebs, abusing them, and increasing the rate of the illness.

Mentally people are being criticized and discriminated in a wrong way, which can …show more content…
The article states, “While celebrity sufferers who speak out about their depression are hailed as heroes, ordinary citizens are shunned, taunted and abused” (2) The author uses powerful words such as “shunned, taunted and abused” to explain the difference between mentally ill people and celebrities who are going the depression, which grabs the audience’s attention. This situation can be related to this article called The Saints and The Rednecks written by William J. Chambliss. The article talks about how The Saints are no different compared to The Rednecks and their attributes of crime are the same except The Saints had high class and used it to fool the people of the town. In addition, celebrities have high class and they use it to get more attention compared to ordinary mentally ill people. Celebrities uses the media to confess about their feelings, which gains sponsors while ordinary mentally ill people do not. Instead, ordinary people feel more sympathy towards celebs rather paying attention to ordinary mentally ill people. The author states, “While public confessions of depression by well known people including the tennis champion Serena Williams, the US actress Kirsten Dunst and chat-show host Stephen Fry were increasing, abuse of sufferers was also widespread.”(8) The author …show more content…
Due to the abusiveness and discrimination cause by ordinary people, mentally ill people are refusing to go to therapy and they take medication. This statics shows, “Drugs and psychotherapy can help 60-80 per cent of people with depression but only half get treatment and only 10 per cent receive treatment that is effective – at the right dose, for long enough and with the right kind of therapy.”(5) This is a legitimacy quote that the author uses to prove that discrimination causes mentally ill people to become embarrassed or insecure about going to seek real help. This is also related to an article called Stigma and Social Identity written by Erving Goffman. In article Stigma and Social Identity, Goffman talks about how people become stigmatized and discriminated for who they are. Another similar case, people’s discriminating behavior towards the mentally ill people is leading to a huge situation where they do not want to see a therapist for their concern of closure. Professor Graham Thornicroft stated, "We have a major problem here. Non-disclosure is an extra barrier – it means people don't seek treatment and don't get help."(7) The author uses a therapist quote to shows that mentally ill people are being discomfort by ordinary people, which makes them have the inability to open to others. The author is trying to point out that mentally ill people will no