mental illness stigma

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Read E.Fuller Torrey MD psychiatrist and leader of the Treatment Advocacy Center thinks stigma is caused by violent acts by people with mental illness. This statement is based on what Dr. Torrey wrote on his site,www.psychlaws.org His organization is called The Treatment Advoacy Center. Objectively speaking they advocate what they call Assisted Treament. Its basically involuntary outpatient treatment with the option of forced inpatient treatment if the patient doesn't comply. They are of the opinion that consumers don't seek treatment because of lack of insight in having a mental illness. They completely ignore the notion that shame caused by stigma could be a factor. I work for a social service agency that serves people with mental illness aka mental health consumers/psychiatric survivors. One of my responsibilities is creating an anti stigma web site. My take on stigma is it may be true if there was less violence, there may be less stigma. However to believe there's only one of cause of practically anything is being rather simplistic. This is not to say the diminishing of violence would help deter negativity toward the mentally ill. However through my experience at the agency and reading on the topic, I see there are other considerations. There are people who think well they're just feeling sorry for themselves. Or they're only being lazy and/shiftless. Or if they'd pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In other words these statements, at least to me, seems like these people don't believe mental illness even exists. I know from my work it does exists and people do suffer from it. I know too there are effective treatments too. My question is Do you think Dr Torrey is right or do you see him Dr. E Full of Himself Torrey. Are there other factors involved here?