Are you missing the bigger picture on mental health?

Imagine applying for a job and being told not to mention your illness or you won’t get hired. Unfortunately, that’s just one of the situations people living with a serious mental illness all too often experience due to widespread stigma and misconceptions about their conditions. A revolution is needed in how we think about serious mental illnesses to ensure those affected receive care that is tailored to their unique needs. And to stand any chance of meaningful change, people with lived experience need to be at the center of this revolution. 

Introducing the Global Mental Health Community Summit

We need to listen to, hear, and learn from the patient community. As part of our generational commitment to mental health at Boehringer Ingelheim, we recognize our responsibility to ensure the knowledge and insights of people with lived experience are fundamental in everything we do. Enter our first-ever Global Mental Health Community Summit. Watch the highlights from this pioneering meeting below.  

Breaking the stigma

What did we learn? Well, lots of things. But the message that resonated most was the need to address stigma, which infiltrates every aspect of people’s lives. What is the impact of this stigma? It’s what can prevent people from getting jobs, making or keeping friendships, and even seeking treatment. This is especially true for people with lived experience of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder.  

Importantly, in understanding the significant impact of stigma and how we can begin to tackle them, we need to understand how it affects people differently. The circumstances of every person with a serious mental health condition are different; people are at different stages of their journeys and come from different cultures that might have different viewpoints on mental health. That’s why the global nature of our Summit, where we had over 50 attendees from 21 countries, was so important.  

“Lived patient experience and the learnings we take from there should be at the center of everything we do.” – Nedim Pipic, Therapeutic Area Head CNS, Retinopathies and Emerging Areas, Boehringer Ingelheim.

The need to ignite change in how we all think about and support people with serious mental illness is further supported by research from the Economist Impact Rethinking mental health care report, commissioned by Boehringer. It found that stigma is a universal issue and that this has wide-reaching consequences, for example on people’s desire to act on mental health. Perhaps most concerning is the impact stigma has on the people affected, with some delaying seeking help due to fear of stigma. Clearly, efforts to tackle stigma to date have not been enough. 

At Boehringer, we understand that the journey to real change is long and complex. With our generational commitment to serious mental illness, it’s a path we’re determined to follow. Our first Global Mental Health Community Summit marks the start of this mission, working together with the patient community to better educate the general public, healthcare professionals, and policymakers and normalize treatment-seeking in serious mental illness. 