Stigma is leading to under-treatment of mental health conditions, says leading psychiatrist

Progress in treating mental health conditions is too recent for them to have taken their place alongside other conditions that are treatable, says the past president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Jeffrey Lieberman.

At an expert encounter at the Science Media Centre in London, Lieberman told journalists that, as a result, this unwarranted stigma still persists, is as profound as racism or religious intolerance, and leads to widespread neglect and under-treatment of patients.

Lieberman, who was in London to give a lecture at the Royal College of Psychiatrists on the future of the specialty, said that a revolution in attitudes as profound as that achieved by AIDS activists in the early 1980s was needed.

How had this neglect come …