Stigma of manic depression: a psychologist's experience.

THE LANCET • Vol 352 • September 26, 1998 1053 and provide a haven for real distress at the worst times of illness. All this requires money as well as new socially inclusive attitudes from the community and its representatives. Mental illness is no respecter of persons. It affects many in society, black and white, young or old, rich or poor. But to be black, poor, and mentally ill is to suffer the most extreme discrimination that society can impose. The UK Disability Discrimination Act 1996 should be widened to encompass social discrimination against people with mental illness, and the Equal Opportunities Commission charged with tackling this last bastion of endemic discrimination. Little has been heard of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Ill People adopted in 1991. With the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, perhaps the UK Government could go one step further and enshrine the rights set out in the Declaration. Those suffering discrimination as a result of mental illness would then have a statute against which to claim protection and redress. Other jurisdictions might then follow. Only a bold move of that sort, demonstrating governments’ real determination to outlaw discrimination against disabled people, will change attitudes to those who have been unjustifiably neglected for so long.