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Where a stigma rests in a reasonable desire (wanting to not have a mental illness), I am not sure that the stigma is removable.
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These days I believe the Stigma evolves more around the unpredictable and some times dangerous behavior of the mentally ill. There are certain communicable diseases that cause erratic and anti-social behavior but these I think are not "mental illness" in the terms of the conversation here.
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it was both sad and surprising to see how many of her friends more or less abandoned her -- just couldn't hack being confronted with her illness. And "stigmatized" was how it felt to her.
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Being sick changed her state as a person. People don't react well to that kind of change. Some people may embrace it on the other hand if they can identify with it.
The minister at our church suffers from a huge number of physical ailments. Treatments for these ailments take up a lot of time. Yet he still fulfills all of his duties as minister. Now, he came to our church with these ailments. I wonder if he had developed these ailments after he arrived would people remark how much he had changed and should we try to replace him?