Does being around someone who is open about mental illness actually reduce stigma?

Contact-based interventions — where people have direct, meaningful interactions with someone who has lived experience of mental illness — are among the most robustly evidenced strategies for reducing stigma in research literature. This does not mean you are obligated to disclose your diagnosis in every relationship. It does mean that at a population level, the cumulative effect of people living openly with mental health conditions, supported by safe workplaces and communities, does shift community attitudes over time. Australia's mental health strategy has included contact-based anti-stigma campaigns (such as those run through SANE Australia and Everymind) as part of the broader framework for this reason.

What support is available if I am experiencing stigma from my mental health diagnosis?

Several organisations offer support specifically for people who have experienced discrimination or stigma related to mental health conditions. SANE Australia (sane.org) runs a counselling and peer support service staffed by people with lived experience. Beyond Blue (beyondblue.org.au) offers confidential online chat, phone support, and forums. Mental Health Carers Australia supports family members navigating the system. If you have experienced discrimination in employment or services because of a mental health condition, the Australian Human Rights Commission administers complaint processes under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, which covers psychiatric disability.

Australian mental health stigma runs deep — MJA survey of 6,000 adults

What just happened

The current issue of the Medical Journal of Australia (Volume 224, Issue 6, June 2026) has published what is likely the most comprehensive recent snapshot of mental health stigma in Australia. Researchers surveyed 6,032 representative Australian adults about their attitudes toward people with six different mental health conditions: depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, early schizophrenia, long-term schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder (BPD).

The findings are not easy to read if you live with any of these conditions, or if you have someone you love who does.

Unpredictability beliefs — the perception that people with mental illness are dangerous or erratic — were held by 23.3 per cent of respondents for depression, rising to 50.7 per cent for bipolar disorder, 56.3 per cent for borderline personality disorder, and 61.9 per cent for long-term schizophrenia. At least 20 per cent of respondents disagreed that people with any of these six conditions possessed personal value — a figure that held even for depression, which carried the lowest stigma overall. One in four Australians — 25.9 per cent — endorsed involuntary or compulsory treatment for people with early schizophrenia.

Social exclusion attitudes were also documented. Roughly 29.7 per cent of respondents expressed unwillingness to accept a family member marrying someone with ADHD — a figure that rose to 64.4 per cent for long-term schizophrenia.

The researchers’ conclusion: “sustained action is needed across multiple sectors” to address stigma, particularly for conditions that are less well understood in public discourse.

The both-and

Why this data matters now

Australia has invested significantly in mental health anti-stigma campaigns over the past decade. The SANE national stigma monitor, the national mental health commission’s work, and programmes like R U OK? and Headspace have all aimed to shift community attitudes. This MJA data is a benchmark against which that investment can be measured — and it shows, at minimum, that the work is far from done.

The gradient across conditions is clinically meaningful. Depression — the most prevalent and most visible mental health condition in public discourse — carries real stigma (one in four Australians holds unpredictability beliefs about people with bipolar disorder), but substantially less than schizophrenia and BPD. Conditions that are less discussed publicly, or whose presentations are less predictable or harder to identify with, carry the heaviest stigma load.

BPD is a particularly instructive case. Beyond Blue notes that BPD is one of the most stigmatised diagnoses even within the mental health system itself — where clinicians can hold negative attitudes toward people with the condition. The MJA data, showing 56.3 per cent unpredictability beliefs from the general public, sits within that larger context.

What stigma actually does to people who experience it

Stigma is not merely offensive — it has measurable clinical consequences. The research literature on this is consistent: people who anticipate stigma are less likely to seek help early, more likely to delay treatment, and more likely to disengage from care when they experience stigmatising interactions with health professionals. This is sometimes called the “stigma-help-seeking gap.”

For women at 45, the perimenopause context is important. Depression, anxiety, and mood instability are common in the perimenopausal period — driven by fluctuating oestrogen and its effects on serotonin and GABA pathways — and are frequently dismissed or misattributed. When a woman in this demographic also carries a pre-existing mental health diagnosis, the stakes of stigma from clinicians and family alike are compounded. She may be less likely to advocate for herself; clinicians may attribute perimenopause-driven mood changes to her diagnosis rather than investigating them on their merits.

SANE Australia’s work on stigma documents how social exclusion — friends withdrawing, family relationships changing, employment discrimination — is a consistent feature of life with a mental health diagnosis in Australia. The MJA survey quantifies the community attitudes that underpin those experiences.

What “compulsory treatment” attitudes actually reflect

The finding that one in four Australians endorses involuntary treatment for schizophrenia requires some context. Australia does have legal frameworks for involuntary mental health treatment in all states and territories, under legislation that allows compulsory treatment when someone is acutely unwell and poses a risk to themselves or others. The existence of these frameworks is not the problem being measured here.

What the survey likely captures is something different: the background belief that people with schizophrenia cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own care, even in the absence of acute crisis. That belief — extended from appropriate clinical frameworks into a generalised attitude — is where stigma and human rights intersect. Twenty-six per cent of Australians holding it is a real signal of how far public understanding of mental health conditions has to travel.

2 cents

If you are living with depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, BPD, or schizophrenia: this data is not telling you something you do not already know about the world. It is confirming it, in numbers, from a credible scientific source. Your experience of being underestimated, doubted, or excluded is not a misreading of the room — it is documented. That knowledge can be useful in two directions: it removes self-blame for the extra weight these interactions carry; and it gives language for conversations with people who have the capacity to hear it.

If you are not living with one of these conditions: the MJA data is telling you that your community holds beliefs about people who do that are not grounded in evidence and that cause real harm. “Sustained action across multiple sectors” starts with ordinary conversations between people who trust each other — not only campaigns.

If you are a GP: your patients with mental health diagnoses are navigating stigma from within the health system as well as outside it. The therapeutic relationship you build has a specific protective function in that environment that goes beyond the clinical transaction.

Verdict: yes — worth knowing about.

Sources cited

Medical Journal of Australia — Stigmatising attitudes towards people with mental health conditions: representative survey of Australian adults. June 2026; 224(6). https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2026/224/6/stigmatising-attitudes-towards-people-depression-bipolar-disorder-borderline
SANE Australia — Stigma and discrimination. https://www.sane.org/information-stories/the-sane-blog/stigma-and-discrimination
Beyond Blue — Stigma, discrimination and mental health. https://www.beyondblue.org.au/mental-health/stigma-discrimination-and-mental-health