Click each tab and read the information.

Common Biases

There are a number of common biases that professionals and others carry regarding people with mental illnesses and co-occurring disorders and their families. These biases are often amplified if the person or family is from a racial or ethnic minority or has a disability. A small sample of these include the following:

• If people lived correctly they would not get mental illnesses.
• People with intellectual or developmental disabilities cannot experience a mental illness or benefit from treatments.
• Use of clinical or evidence-based practices always leads to improved mental health functioning.
• Avoidance of clinical or evidence-based practices means the person does not want to get better.
• African Americans feel less physical pain and are more likely to have serious mental illnesses.
• People with serious mental illnesses usually come from poorly functioning families.
• Abstinence is the only acceptable approach to substance misuse.
• You must be abstinent from substances first in order to benefit from mental health or stabilization services.
• Recovery is not possible for some people.
• A focus on spiritual reasons for symptoms means the person is ignorant or unwell.
• Talking about spirituality is inappropriate in standard treatment.
• Offering services in languages other than English meets the needs of non-English-speaking communities.

Counteracting Biases

It’s important to take regular steps to expand and correct your thinking in areas like these. To truly be person and family-centered requires that you can hold hope for people from all walks of life. You must believe in their capacity to recover even when they face many challenges. It means developing the skills, knowledge, and attitudes you need to demonstrate cultural humility. It means understanding more about the impact of these illnesses on families and supporters and not just the other way around. It means getting good at shared, supported, or collaborative decision-making processes. It means using these artfully, even when people are in mandated treatment.

Formal and ongoing training in all of these practice and others is important. However, so is exposure to success stories and differing viewpoints. Professionals can learn much from seeking out and listening to people from all walks of life talk about their recovery stories. People have been successful in recovering who have faced extreme challenges in life including homelessness, abuse, chemical dependency, loss of family and many other adverse experiences. Some have done this both by embracing typical treatments and services. Others have done this by avoiding them. Some have recovered when no one believed in them. Others recovered because someone believed in them and would not give up. Stories of inspiration and hope are needed to keep people moving forward. Hearing different paths to recovery can help the professional be more creative and open-minded in their approaches.

Professional should also listen to the frustrations and barriers in these stories. People and their families know much about what could improve in the systems and processes of mental health treatment. They are often not asked or are dismissed when they do share. Often they are seen and “difficult” or “non-compliant” people. However, the changing paradigm means people and their families have a stronger voice in helping professionals understand what is working for them and what is not.