Background: Stigma within mental health settings may be equally detrimental to people with mental illnesses as societal stigma.
Aims: This study investigated stigma in mental health settings through a mixed qualitative-quantitative design.
Method: Practitioners 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.
Results: Interpretive 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."
Conclusions: These 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.