Pineapple Pizza | Kayla Cao | TEDxYouth@Jenks

i hate pineapple pizza i think that it's disgusting in that fruit and pizza should not be together and rightfully so the majority of the population agrees with me or at least i like to think they do however i can't help but feel just a little bit bad for those who truly like pineapple pizza being such a highly controversial topic they probably have to think twice before openly expressing their love for it because if they do they have a chance of being ridiculed and shamed and as silly as this sounds this is a perfect example of stigma my name is kayla and today i will be talking about the role of gender and mental health stigma so what is stigma you might hear this word and vaguely think back to your middle school science class and think that it's that long stick inside of a flower however the stigma that i want to talk about today is a different kind of stigma the stigma i'm talking about is defined as a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance person or quality now this isn't a physical mark that actually brands certain people it's an unspoken thing a negative social attitude attached to a person or group of people and it aims to shame them for a perceived difference and there are many examples of stigma in society there's stigma attached to being in the lgbtq plus community being of a particular faith or religion or liking pineapple on pizza however one of the most heavily stigmatized areas in society today is mental health our society disproves mental illness we dismiss it as a weakness or a fault in our personalities i'm sure we've all heard that people who are depressed are lazy and those with anxiety are cowardly and these false stereotypes only further skew our perception of what mental illness actually is contributing to the overall stigmatization of mental illness it affects people struggling with mental illnesses by influencing who they tell when they tell and even if they tell additionally stereotypes surrounding mental illnesses are often politicized people like to assume that those with mental illnesses are dangerous and violent when according to mental health.gov only a small minority of those mental illnesses actually commit violent crimes and that in fact they're ten times more likely to be victims of one making them a vulnerable population we need to be protecting instead of fearing so in order to attempt to deconstruct this discrimination that mental illness faces we need to attack the root of the problem by deconstructing mental health stigma mental health stigma is a very broad topic with many groups facing disproportionate effects but today i will just be tackling the role of gender and mental health stigma so if i were to very briefly explain gender roles i would say that men are seen as the providers of the family they're supposed to be strong independent and overpowering whereas women are seen as the caretakers and belong in the kitchen and these might seem like outdated stereotypes but a study conducted by the gina davis institute on gender and media studied ads released from 2006 to 2016. and they found that men were four times more likely than women to even have a presence in ads and had seven times the speaking time and furthermore women were more than fifty percent were fifty percent more likely than men to be shown in the kitchen and these gender role portrayals in commercialization are just one aspect in our lives gender roles are everywhere now they're ingrained into our society in fact a study conducted by professors at queen's university in canada found that because of the stereotype that men need to be unemotional and because we relate help seeking to femininity in our society then systematically under utilize mental health services and disproportionately experience mental health stigma we can see that right now gender role portrayals are starting to seep into our overall perception of how to handle mental illness within our culture because according to the national institute on on mental health and 2015 only five percent of men reported suffering from a mental illness this hesitancy in acknowledging a mental illness will only make it worse we need to remove this stigma we need to remove the stigma in men where help seeking is discouraged because if we fail to do this not only will their mental illnesses get worse but it can also lead to things like relying on substance abuse for self-treatment and mental health stigma among men not only affects the likelihood of them seeking help but also the support that is available to them one such area support are medical professionals according to sociology professors practitioners are less likely to diagnose a man with depression than a woman even if their presenting symptoms are similar in another area support that is negatively affected by harmful men's gender roles are friends and family and this can start as early as middle school in a study conducted by anita chandra a senior policy researcher at the rand corporation it was found that girls were more likely than boys to turn to a friend for an emotional concern and as a whole boys had less experience and knowledge when it came to mental health and the key factors in perpetuating these outcomes were parental disapproval and perceived stigma so as a whole the root of the problem with mental health stigma among men is the unjustified roles that they're placed in because they've always been taught by the media their schools families and even their friends that they need to be this unemotional and stoic being they not only fail to help themselves when it comes to mental illnesses but they also fail to help those around them so in the same way that men avoid treating their mental illnesses because of the femininity that is attached to health seeking within our society women experience stigma around mental health conditions that are labeled as male dominant and aggressive like substance abuse although research from the national institute of drug abuse tells us that men are more likely to abuse drugs than women dr tammy anderson from the university of illinois chicago says that a large part of research with drug misuse between males and females were conducted under assumptions based on gender roles prior to the 1980s men's and women's drug abuse were viewed through a male lens and what this means is that almost all studies involving alcohol and drugs were conducted among men however as research began to progress and we began to see and we began to see gender role bias taken into consideration it was found that women also a large majority of women also experience drug abuse it was found that drug misuse and abuse were more common among female arrestees than male arrestees so this idea of drug substance misuse being male dominant that was perpetuated by professional research made women struggling with substance misuse feel less accepted and heard but even worse these stereotypes actually fuel addiction in both genders research finds that addiction is related to an individual's quest to integrate opposing gender scripts masculinity and femininity in an attempt to achieve wholeness dr anderson explains that due to rigid expectations of conformity to masculine and feminine identities identities in early adolescence this is correlated to an increased risk in developing drug related identities especially for women again we see women bearing most of the weight when it comes to gender discrimination and drug research so besides substance misuse it might seem like women can't really face any mental health stigma because after all when it comes to mental illnesses women eat up the majority of the population more women than men experience depression women are two times more likely to experience anxiety anxiety disorders two-thirds of people with dementia are women eating disorders are more common among women and worldwide women actually are more affected than men by ptsd largely because they're more exposed to sexual violence so after these statistics it may sound like you can't really experience stigma if you're so over represented over representative in a group but however we'll soon be able to see that the opposite is true in an experiment conducted by james worth and galen bodenhausen they decided to study the stereotype that we were just talking about the stereotype being that images of dangerous mental illnesses like violent alcoholism are more directed at men so in their experiment they conducted a nationwide survey with volunteers from all different age groups and these volunteers were to read a case history of people studying people struggling with mental illnesses some read about ryan a male who was your stereotypical alcoholic and some write about karen a woman who was showing all the classical symptoms of major depression and then some volunteers read switched around cases where karen was the alcoholic and brian was the one struggling with depression and the idea was to see if the typicality of brian and karen's symptoms or lack of it shapes the volunteers reactions and judgments and it did exactly that as we often see is the case with women named karen people showed more anger and disgust and less sympathy towards karen who was depressed than towards brian who was depressed volunteers were also less likely to help karen who is struggling from a typical disorder of depression and what this means is that because the public views depression as such a common mental illness within women people are much more likely to treat depressed women with less sympathy and acceptance than men the definition of mental health stigma so after looking at state mental health stigma as a whole it might seem like this whole thing is a lose-lose situation men are suffering from it women are suffering from it everybody is suffering but one of the first steps to deconstructing mental stigma is just by being aware of it because going back to the definition in the beginning we can see that mental stigma is socially driven as you walk out of here today i hope that you're inspired to check in on your friends and discouraged from dismissing someone's mental health status just because of preconceived notions or stereotypes because it's the little things like these where we could become more inclusive towards some of the most marginalized groups in our society this is for the men struggling with depression the women battling substance abuse and finally this is for the group fighting one of the most terrifying battles of all this is for my pineapple pizza lovers thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,505

Keywords: English, Health, Mental health, Self-help, Sex, TEDxTalks

Id: TRP5n3xLocM

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021