Tackling stigma and asking for help

The three types of stigma

The general guide on this site sets out the frame this page extends. Public stigma is what other people think and do. Self-stigma is what a person comes to believe about themselves. Structural stigma is the rules, policies and systems that exclude a group. The three reinforce each other: public attitudes feed self-stigma, and both are locked in by structures that treat a group as less deserving. The frame applies across health topics — the general guide covers it in full — and this page follows it into two places where stigma is most often named as a barrier: mental health, and visible skin conditions.

Stigma and mental health

For adolescents, WHO names stigma as one of the barriers that keeps mental health conditions largely unrecognised and untreated, alongside the shortage of services (fact sheet, 1 September 2025). For suicide, WHO is direct: stigma surrounding mental disorders and suicide means many people thinking of taking their own life, or who have attempted suicide, are not seeking help, and raising community awareness and breaking the taboo is important for progress (fact sheet, 3 November 2026). In later life the same pattern appears: loneliness and social isolation are key risk factors for mental-health conditions in older people, and stigma keeps those conditions hidden too (WHO, 20 July 2026). The mechanism is the same at every age — a person weighs asking for help against being judged for it, and often decides not to ask.

Stigma and visible skin conditions

The same stigma pattern reaches conditions that can be seen. WHO calls psoriasis a chronic, noncommunicable skin disease with no clear cause or cure, associated with discrimination and stigma (Global report on psoriasis, 2016). The companion guide on living with a visible skin condition covers psoriasis, vitiligo, leprosy and scabies — conditions where the stigma is visible before the person has spoken. The two stigma pages belong together: competitors and charities treat skin stigma and mental-health stigma separately, but the mechanism — being marked, then withdrawing — is the same, and the same three types of stigma describe both.

Why asking for help feels hard

Asking for help means naming the problem out loud, to another person, and accepting that the other person may judge it. That is why stigma works as a barrier even where services exist: the service can be free, nearby and well-run, and still unused, because the cost of asking feels higher than the cost of staying silent. Campaigns such as Time to Talk Day exist to lower that cost — by making conversation about mental health ordinary rather than exceptional. This page does not reproduce conversation scripts or tell anyone what to say; it states the frame and points to the routes. What helps, at population level, is what WHO names: community awareness, and breaking the taboo.

Where the support routes sit

Support routes sit in the Wellbeing Support Directory on this site, which lists official routes only — no scoring, no questionnaire, no triage — and carries the site’s crisis banner. The companion guide on finding support for a child covers the official routes for children. This page deliberately does not list helplines or services itself: a list copied here would duplicate the directory, drift out of date, and mix verified routes with unverified ones. One list, kept in one place, is the model — and the directory’s hold on unverified numbers stands.

Frequently asked questions