Disability Stigma in the Middle East

How members of the public, as well as members of the health service, think and act toward people with disabilities can greatly impact the life experiences of such individuals. This chapter seeks to examine how those with mental health problems experience stigmatizing attitudes in their lives, specifically within the context of the Middle East. There are specific cultural issues in the Middle East that lead to an increased experience of stigma related to stigmatizing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The combination of these features can lead to people with mental health issues becoming increasingly self-isolated and can lead to a lack of access to the treatment that they need. This chapter examines the approaches that have been taken in the past to improve this situation within Middle Eastern countries. The core approach has been to improve the mental health literacy of healthcare staff and the wider public, and while this represents positive cultural change, the evidence suggests that this has been hard to instill consistently across the region. A series of recommendations are therefore made to reduce stigma and improve mental health literacy within Middle East countries. These recommendations include consistent and multimodal approaches to improving public and healthcare staff’s mental health literacy, focusing on using the region’s traditional and religious beliefs. Instead of being automatically a barrier to understanding, it is recommended that such cultural positioning is used as a means of improving the attitudes and behaviors concerning mental health.