Mental Health Stigma

Heather McWilliam is an award-winning entrepreneur and changemaker who has redefined bravery through her journey of overcoming workplace abuse and advocating for mental health. After a decade as a police officer in Canada, she founded Brave Inspires Brave, a movement that empowers individuals to embrace leadership and foster conversations about trauma and resilience. Her landmark victory in a Human Rights case against a major police service has highlighted the need for systemic change in law enforcement. During her presentation at the Women of Rubies Media Visibility Bootcamp, Heather shared her powerful story of resilience, emphasizing how media platforms can drive meaningful change by amplifying courageous conversations and promoting healing.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, media platforms hold an incredible opportunity—and responsibility—to reshape how society views mental health. They can challenge outdated stigmas, create safer workplaces, and promote overall well-being by encouraging open conversations and amplifying stories of resilience and healing.

We may not have walked a mile in anyone else’s shoes, but we can choose to keep an open mind. Everyone has valuable lessons for humanity as we continue to grow and evolve together.

1. Normalize Conversations About Mental Health

Open conversations about mental health are the first step toward reducing stigma and fostering personal and professional growth. Media platforms play a crucial role in making these discussions part of the mainstream narrative.

2. Storytelling & Testimonials

Personal stories are powerful. When individuals share their mental health journeys, it humanizes the issue and builds empathy. Media platforms can:

Share real-life stories about overcoming mental health challenges.
Highlight testimonials of personal growth, healing, and recovery.
Showcase diverse experiences to normalize mental health struggles and triumphs.

Compassionate Coverage

Responsible storytelling is equally important. Media outlets should:

Focus on stories of healing, accountability, and personal development.
Share stories from both survivors and those working toward accountability and resolution.
Use a trauma-informed approach, as media coverage may be someone’s first step toward reclaiming their life and mental health.

Intentional, compassionate coverage creates trust and offers hope to those facing mental health challenges, whether in the workplace or personal life.

3. Hope for Transitioning from Unhealthy Workplaces

Transitioning from an unhealthy workplace can be daunting, but it’s also a powerful opportunity for personal growth and reinvention. Media platforms can play a critical role by sharing stories of successful career pivots, offering expert advice, and providing access to resources that empower individuals to pursue new opportunities.

Removing Barriers of Fear

Share success stories of individuals who transitioned from toxic workplaces to fulfilling careers.
Highlight career coaches, business mentors, and human rights advocates offering actionable guidance.
Address how fear can be paralyzing but overcome through intentional planning, mindset shifts, and resource access.

4. Becoming an Entrepreneur: Turning Pain Into Purpose

Feature entrepreneurs who turned personal struggles into purpose-driven businesses.
Provide access to free and/or affordable retraining programs for entrepreneurship, digital skills, and leadership development.
Offer insights on how to build a business from lived experiences and skills gained even in toxic environments.

Access to Leaders & Coaches

Spotlight leadership programs, business coaches, and mental health advocates who support career transitions.
Offer information on online platforms, coaching networks, and mentorship programs.
Share testimonials from leaders who’ve built successful careers after overcoming personal and workplace challenges.

5. Human Rights, Legal Access & Advocacy

Media platforms can also educate the public about their workplace rights and provide legal resources. Access to legal information helps individuals understand when to advocate for themselves or seek external support.

Know Your Rights

Highlight legal experts discussing employee rights, workplace safety laws, and human rights protections.
Provide access to legal aid organizations and human rights commissions for filing workplace complaints.

Restorative Justice & Advocacy

Share real-life cases where individuals have won legal battles or achieved workplace reform.
Feature organizations supporting workplace fairness and advocating for legislative change.

6. Financial Tips for Career Transition

Transitioning from a toxic workplace can be financially challenging, but careful planning can reduce risks and help individuals pursue fulfilling careers. Media platforms can share financial tips, budgeting advice, and funding sources for personal development.

Building Financial Resilience

Share expert-driven budgeting tips for creating emergency funds before leaving a toxic job.
Offer strategies for managing debt, saving money, and building credit while pursuing new careers.

Access to Financial Resources

Highlight grants, scholarships, and business loans available for entrepreneurs and career changers.
Feature organizations offering financial literacy courses for professionals making career pivots.

Career Transition Tools

Recommend career development platforms offering free and affordable retraining programs, professional certifications, and industry-specific skills.
Share personal stories of individuals who succeeded after making significant career shifts, emphasizing financial planning strategies.

7. Share Practices for Personal Transformation

Media platforms can inspire personal transformation by sharing stories, expert advice, and real-life examples of how individuals can pivot from surviving to thriving.

Self-Awareness & Higher Consciousness

Promote mindfulness, meditation, and reflective practices for personal clarity.
Share content encouraging individuals to become more self-aware, enabling them to better navigate life’s challenges.

Forgiveness & Letting Go of Ego

Feature personal stories on forgiveness and the power of releasing resentment.
Offer expert perspectives on overcoming ego-driven conflicts and embracing humility in personal and professional relationships.

Turning Pain Into Purpose

Encourage individuals to reflect on their struggles and recognize the lessons within their pain.
Share stories of those who found a greater calling by embracing life’s challenges as opportunities for transformation.

7. Engage & Empower Communities

Media platforms can go beyond storytelling by creating interactive spaces where individuals can connect, share, and learn from one another.

Interactive Forums & Live Q&As

Host live discussions and Q&A sessions focused on mental health topics.
Create peer-support forums where people can find encouragement and understanding.

Social Media Connection

Respond to mental health conversations with empathy and supportive messaging.
Share positive, uplifting content while promoting available mental health resources.

8. Encourage Healing Through Media Representation

Healing happens when individuals see themselves reflected in positive, supportive media narratives. Media platforms can create events and initiatives focused on emotional processing and personal growth.

Peaceful Gatherings & Emotional Processing

Partner with organizations to hold community events centered on healing and personal development.
Create events where individuals can process difficult news stories in supportive environments.
Highlight stories of individuals who have rebuilt their lives after facing mental health challenges.

Conclusion: Building Supportive Cultures

Media platforms have the potential to be powerful allies in reducing mental health stigma and promoting workplace wellness. They can create a supportive culture where personal development, financial resilience, and professional growth are prioritized by fostering open conversations, providing expert-driven resources, and sharing personal success stories.

In a world where healing begins with conversation, media platforms can guide us toward understanding, hope, and transformation—one courageous story at a time.

Learn more about Heather Mcwilliam work via her website

When the hand is broken, we go to see the doctor.
No, we run to see the doctor.
We know it needs fixing.
No one will see you carrying a broken hand and tell you to suck it up, hide it, you don’t want anyone to know. Of course, no one will stigmatize you for your broken hand.

The intense pain will not let you hide, you will run off to a surgeon and ask him to do something.
We all know the hand is replaceable and we even have two.We have two hands, two legs, two eyes, two ears, two kidneys; nearly every organ in the body can be successfully transplanted or fixed surgically.
You also know that even if you lose those limbs, there are prosthetic limbs you can wear so we have at our beck and call a ton of remedies for fixing a broken limb. Let’s not mention the friends and family that will support you during recovery and take turns by your bed side.Sadly, when your mind/brain is ‘broken’. They tell you to hide it. Don’t seek help. You will bring shame on the family and wrongly so, ignorant people will begin to avoid you and your family.

How else would you fix the mind/brain if you don’t seek help?
Do you have two brains? Do you know anyone that will donate one for you?

Are you looking forward to doing a mind/brain transplant or are there prosthetic minds/brains available for sale? Some people even have the resources to seek help but will hide under the cover of ‘do you know who I am?’. My pedigree? My status? Yet, they are not whole.

The broken mind/brain does not have prosthesis.
The broken mind or brain cannot be transplanted from a family member or donor.
Only you know where it hurts and how it hurts.

Some of us have emotional baggage from our childhood and past experiences that only therapy can take care of. Unfortunately, we can’t place these feelings and its consequences so we are unable to deal with it. It affects our relationships, our performance at work/productivity and our wellbeing. For this reason, some have been tagged as ‘having spiritual problem’ or being possessed while being ferried from one prayer house to another. It is a factor in the domestic violence/emotional abuse in marriage towards spouse and children.

It is no longer enough to tell people to lose weight, to follow a meal plan, to register at the gym, to wake up first thing in the morning to exercise – as long as those deep-seated issues are not dealt with through therapy and inquiry (excavating & uprooting); many of us will continue to use food as a coping mechanism. This is why with my clients, I choose first to focus on behavior remodeling. Sadly, many people don’t want to deal with the real issues they prefer a ‘meal plan’ that will fail them again and again.
You know deep within you that this mind/brain is not ‘working’ as it should and you want to be whole…believe me, there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Mental illnesses are disorders affecting a state and part of the body just like you would have kidney diseases, liver diseases and every other disease that affects a part of the body. Once a disorder in any of these parts result, it becomes an illness. There should be no stigma associated with it, just because they manifest differently is not a cause for stigma either. If we are not stigmatizing the person with a broken hand, we are wrong to stigmatize the one with a broken mind/brain.

Please, don’t let your ‘well-meaning’ pastor tell you ‘we will pray it out’. Why did that other church member who fractured her knee get admitted in the hospital and you all went to see her with baskets of fruits. Why was she not managed in church with prayer and fasting?
PS: Your pastor cannot fulfill every role in your life and a good pastor should be the first person encouraging you to seek professional help.

Yes, in God’s word there is an answer for every situation. Just like we had priests, we had kings, we had men at the city gates, we had scribes. Each one fulfilling a different purpose.
Today, we have therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. Every wisdom here on earth comes from God. So, the therapists and psychiatrists you will see are acting under God’s divine wisdom just like the pastor is.

Even the psychiatrist is stigmatized.
In my 2nd year of Medical School (about 13 years ago), I heard about the psychiatrist in my city. They said he behaves like his patients, jumps on tables when attending to patients and ‘looks and acts crazy’. I’m sure most people who ‘distributed’ that narrative had never seen this man. I on the other hand have been there during a 4-week posting in my 5th year, never for once did I witness any of the doctors jumping on tables. This is what ‘the danger of a single story’ does to the world of psychiatry.

Psychiatrists are medical doctors who are trained to diagnose and treat mental illness with medication or evideAccording to the WHO, while information is lacking on mental health and access to mental health in Nigeria is quite limited, it is estimated that at least 4% of the population suffer from depression. I assume this number is very much underestimated thanks to our poor health seeking behaviors (people don’t seek medical help until it is severe).

While there are non-existent desks in the ministries at any level for mental health and only 3.3% of the Federal Government’s health budget goes to mental health, we can do better as individuals. Stigmatization will only lead to more and more people suffering in silence, never getting help and even getting worse. A 4-week therapy session for that woman suffering post-partum depression will go a long way in helping her raise mentally strong children that will neither be neglected nor emotionally abused …but she won’t go for fear that YOU & I will stigmatize/ostracize her and her children.

Summary;
– When we feel pain in our muscles or limbs we see the orthopedic surgeon
– When we feel pain around the abdomen, we see the gastroenterologist
– When our heart hurts suddenly we run down to the cardiologist. No one wants to die of a heart attack.
– When we feel pain in our minds/brains we have every right like every other person who seeks help for pain in other parts of their body to see a therapist or a psychiatrist.

Having a mental illness does not mean you’re broken or weak. far from it. Acknowledging that you have a biological imbalance and need help is the most courageous thing that you can do today: It is a sign of strength, not weakness. I believe everyone deserves a therapy session at least twice a year.
As a psychiatrist rightly quoted, there is no health without mental health.

Mental Health Helplines and Resources in Nigeria
Nigeria Suicide Prevention Initiative: +234 806 210 6493
Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative +234 806 010 1157
She Writes Woman +234 817 491 3329

About Ezinne Meribe
Dr. Ezinne Meribe is the host of Beyond A Dress Size podcast; a podcast series that creates stimulating conversations to pull down misconceptions on nutrition, weight loss, health and body diversity while empowering women to live life beyond the numbers on the dress label, scale or tape.
She is the Lead Wellness Coach/Founder at Zinnyslifestyle, where she leverages her professional qualifications and personal experience to teach women how to OWN & LOVE their bodies and LIVE in it fabulously; having successfully won the struggle with being overweight and loving her body. A UK certified Wellness Professional with a Bachelors in Medicine and Surgery (MBBS), she completed her postgraduate training in Public Health at Kumamoto University, Japan. As a Medical Doctor and Public Health Specialist, she continues to promote preventive medicine as the number one way to combat the severe health system constraints in developing countries.

You can connect with her on
Instagram @zinnyslifestyle
Facebook @zinnyslifestyle
Read more on Medium @ezinnemeribe
Or send an email to info@zinnyslifestyle.com

Heather McWilliam: The Role of Media Platforms in Combating Mental Health Stigma and Fostering Workplace Wellness