{"id":81591,"date":"2026-03-23T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=81591"},"modified":"2026-03-22T17:46:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T23:46:48","slug":"a-danish-program-takes-on-the-stigma-of-mental-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/a-danish-program-takes-on-the-stigma-of-mental-illness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Danish program takes on the stigma of mental illness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At a class reunion a few years ago, a former teacher asked Giuseppe Parlatore what he was doing these days. He was on a state disability pension, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you hurt yourself?\u201d the teacher asked. When Mr. Parlatore said no, that he had a mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, the teacher instinctively stepped back. \u201cOh, then you\u2019re dangerous,\u201d Mr. Parlatore remembered him saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shame that immediately flooded Mr. Parlatore was familiar, he said. He wanted to protest that no, he wasn\u2019t dangerous, but he knew the conversation was already over, his life reduced to a crude stereotype.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have this diagnosis, and I have my challenges,\u201d Mr. Parlatore said. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t make me less of a person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years after he was diagnosed in 2009, Mr. Parlatore, 42, felt like schizophrenia had swallowed him up, leaving him \u201cmore or less a vegetable,\u201d he said. But he has worked hard to manage the voices he hears \u2014 making deals, setting boundaries \u2014 and to carve out a life beyond his illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today he is one of Denmark\u2019s leading mental health advocates, working with the country\u2019s top health officials to change how the public sees mental illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This government initiative, called One of Us, works with people who have mental health challenges \u2014 the program calls them ambassadors \u2014 to share their stories in schools, hospitals and police stations, with a focus on their recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stigma is one of the stubborn realities of mental illness: In a European Union survey in 2023, three-quarters of respondents said that people with mental illness are treated as less capable and as contributing less to society than others are. Decades of research has linked such stigma to higher health care costs and fewer job opportunities, as well as delays in seeking treatment, lower-quality care, worse mental health symptoms and reduced rates of recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStigma has such an effect that people do not seek psychiatric services,\u201d Niels Sand\u00f8, the former director of prevention and inequity at the Danish Health Authority, said. \u201cIf I want to do something about strengthening treatment, we have to do something about the stigmatization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anti-stigma campaigns have a mixed record in mental health, often demonstrating immediate benefits but struggling to achieve lasting change. Nonprofits have led most of these campaigns, but they rarely have the scale or the funding to sustain them. So in 2021, Denmark brought One of Us into its Ministry of Health, Mr. Sand\u00f8 said, effectively turning a grass-roots program into national policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt makes a huge difference whether or not the state is involved,\u201d said Bernice Pescosolido, a professor of sociology at Indiana University Bloomington. Yet with few parallels, it is uncertain whether Denmark can make stigma reduction stick or if it, too, will see the immediate benefits fade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What actually reduces stigma<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most campaigns against stigma have relied on building awareness \u2014 using posters, language guides and public service announcements to educate the public. But in mental health, research suggests that \u201ceducation just really doesn\u2019t work,\u201d said Patrick Corrigan, a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. (Dr. Corrigan spoke to The New York Times in November. He died on Jan. 11, 2026.) It can build knowledge and sympathy but often does not change people\u2019s underlying attitudes, at least in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, according to an analysis of 216 systematic reviews in 2022, social contact is the best way to reduce mental health stigma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sara Evans-Lacko, a mental health services researcher at the London School of Economics, said this does not mean just putting people together or meeting people with mental illness during a crisis but meeting on equal footing, with the space to appreciate shared humanity and common interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When ambassadors from One of Us speak openly about their conditions and recovery, it gives the public something sturdier than a stereotype, said Anja Vedelsby, the program manager for One of Us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ambassadors\u2019 accounts are also framed around solutions, not indictments, Ms. Vedelsby said. \u201cEven if it\u2019s a really bad story about encountering discrimination, ambassadors will always say, \u2018I wish this had happened instead,\u2019\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can be especially helpful for health care workers and police officers, said Ulla Lindgren, a regional coordinator of One of Us, since they \u201cdon\u2019t meet people when they have recovered \u2014 they only meet them when they are the most sick,\u201d often at the height of a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christina Philipsen, a social nurse at Amager and Hvidovre Hospital in Copenhagen, said she had long been nervous about patients with schizophrenia: She just couldn\u2019t understand them. \u201cWhen we are afraid of patients and things escalating, we can be a little more strict and rough,\u201d Ms. Philipsen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when ambassadors from One of Us visited the hospital for the first time in 2023, Ms. Philipsen said that she was moved by their stories \u2014 hearing how it felt to wake up in a hospital and not know what\u2019s happening, to plead for an explanation and get none, to be confused and desperate to leave but instead be pinned down by nurses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the ambassadors made space for Ms. Philipsen and her colleagues to ask questions they had long had, like: \u201cAre you hearing voices all the time? Is that everybody\u2019s voices or just one voice?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julie Andersen, a student at the Danish Police Academy, said the ambassadors had taught her what it was like to try to comply with an officer\u2019s instructions while voices are drowning them out. One ambassador read a story, while at the same time playing a recording of the voices she heard in her head \u2014 the running insults and interruptions. It felt, Ms. Andersen said, like an impossible cacophony. And it helped her realize that, while policing, she needed to slow down \u2014 repeating herself, checking for understanding, being more patient \u2014 and not just default to anger and force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes we can do a lot of harm,\u201d Ms. Andersen said, \u201cbut we don\u2019t always have to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A different kind of recovery<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stigma tends to flow from stereotypes to prejudice to discrimination, Dr. Corrigan said, and social contact can help break this cascade. But society\u2019s contempt can also become internalized, as people with mental illness begin to doubt their worth and blame themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That self-stigmatization, Dr. Corrigan said, can turn people into echo chambers of shame, feeding thoughts like: \u201cWhy should I even try to get a job? Somebody like me is not worth it. Why should I even try to live on my own? Somebody like me is not capable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But serving as an ambassador might help, Dr. Evans-Lacko said, empowering people with mental illness to tell their stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pernille Petersen, 48, said she had been committed to psychiatric wards more than 100 times because of her mental health challenges: She has been given diagnoses, at various times, of schizophrenia, a personality disorder, an anxiety disorder and an eating disorder. For a decade, she lived in a long-term-care facility, where the staff told her that she would not get better \u2014 that she should vacuum, do the dishes and stop expecting more. \u201cAll hope was out for me,\u201d Ms. Petersen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a suicide attempt and a stay in intensive care, Ms. Petersen was committed again. But this time, a psychologist asked her questions no one had in years: \u201cWhat are you good at? What did you like to do before you got sick?\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The psychologist\u2019s questions forced her to picture a self beyond her condition. \u201cIf I have to change things, I have to take responsibility,\u201d Ms. Petersen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Us offered Ms. Petersen a way to make her lost years mean something. Since 2015, she has become an ambassador and shared her story in nursing, occupational therapy, social work and medical schools. Being part of this national effort, she said, has built her confidence, helping her \u201cbecome more than my diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, this work is not entirely innocuous. Every time ambassadors bare their stories, they risk reopening old wounds, Mr. Parlatore said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt takes a lot of courage and mental strength to go back and relive those experiences,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fighting a daily drumbeat of stigma<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social contact is not a magic bullet; it requires the right person to tell the right story, Dr. Pescosolido said. \u201cIf it happened to them and they were successful, that can happen to me too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a fine balance, with ambassadors needing to be stable enough to be sympathetic, she continued, but not so polished that they are seen only as exceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No research has yet examined whether One of Us has changed the public\u2019s attitudes or societal stigma against mental illness, but some evaluations have suggested that the program has shifted attitudes among key gatekeepers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2025 survey of 181 health care workers by the Scandinavian consulting firm NIRAS, 85 percent of health care workers said they had sometimes or often lacked knowledge about patients with mental disorders. Gertrud \u00d8llgaard, an anthropologist with NIRAS, said some nurses had described caring for patients with schizophrenia as \u201cjust something I have to get over with,\u201d or said, \u201cthe shorter time I spend with the patient, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After meeting the program\u2019s ambassadors, however, Ms. \u00d8llgaard found that 98 percent of health care workers felt somewhat or much better prepared to meet and care for patients with mental disorders and 89 percent said they expected to change their behavior to be less stigmatizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The survey did not measure if this shift in attitudes had lasted over time or if it had translated into better behaviors. Still, in follow-up interviews, the health care workers described seeing themselves in the ambassadors’ stories and better appreciating the toll of stigma, Ms. \u00d8llgaard said. \u201cThis made an impression emotionally,\u201d she recalled many of them saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even if social contact has more staying power than education, experts say they are still fighting a daily battle against entrenched stigma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Mr. Parlatore, this struggle is a matter of persistence. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re losing the war,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s a generational project \u2014 at least for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n