The Fear of Judgment: Tackling Stigma and Guilt Around Seeking Mental Health Care
Coping with a mental health condition can be highly challenging. Yet, for many teenagers, the negative attitudes and beliefs that other people hold can be even worse – especially when they cause these beliefs to arise in themselves.
Stigma is thought to be the biggest barrier to recovery and thriving. It holds a powerful grip on a teenager’s self-esteem and can lead to a “why try?” attitude when it comes to receiving treatment and striving towards goals in life.1
When a teenager feels judged and discriminated against by other people, they often start to discriminate against themselves, causing intense feelings of shame and guilt for needing treatment. Adding to the mix the effect of stigma on the entire family unit, these feelings of guilt and low self-worth can be highly difficult to overcome.2
When stigma prevents a teen from receiving much-needed mental health treatment, it can have long-term impacts on their emotional and physical well-being – and future prospects. For this reason, if you’re concerned about a teen’s mental health, it’s important to know how to tackle the stigma and guilt around seeking mental health care. A mental health professional can advise you in this process. This article can also help by covering:
- What stigma around seeking mental health treatment is
- Why mental health stigma prevents treatment for kids
- How to fight mental health stigma for teens
- Overcoming guilt about mental health care for teens
- When to seek help in breaking the stigma of mental health care for children
What Is Stigma Around Seeking Mental Health Treatment?
There’s a lot of awareness and research about stigma and its negative effects on mental health, but defining it? That’s another issue.
Stigma is complex, with many different layers and social and cultural factors. So, it’s difficult to clarify in one definition which encapsulates the harm it can create. However, if we have to choose one definition, we’ll go with the American Psychological Association’s. According to the APA, stigma is “a negative social attitude attached to the characteristic of an individual that may be regarded as a mental, physical, or social deficiency.”
In other words, stigma can imply distaste, objection against, and exclusion of someone. It’s, therefore, unsurprising that stigma is one of the biggest barriers teens face when accepting mental health treatment.
According to recent research, stigma tends to be targeted towards groups of people, such as those with mental health conditions. However, individual people tend to be the victims of it. As a result, stigma can feel very personally isolating – like no one else could possibly understand your experiences.3
Research around mental health has identified three forms of common stigma:4
- Public stigma: Including biased, negative, or discriminatory attitudes that people may have about mental health conditions
- Self-stigma: The negative attitudes and inward-directed shame and guilt that people with mental health difficulties have about their own condition
- Structural stigma: This form of stigma is on more of a “system” level, often including government policies and private organization rules that limit opportunities for people with mental health conditions. For example, governments might not adequately fund mental health services
Stigma and discrimination can be obvious or subtle, but it nevertheless inflicts harm on a teen with a mental health condition – often in the shape of guilt.
Why Mental Health Stigma Prevents Treatment for Kids
Stigma is a form of oppression that can cause a teen to feel stereotyped or prejudiced. As a consequence, stigma from other people can lead to a concept called “self-stigma” in a teen. What this means is that a teenager can turn inaccurate beliefs inwards, causing them to feel “less than,” “unworthy,” “contaminated,” or “disgraced.”5,6
Unfortunately, fear of judgment and feelings of shame can lead to irrational beliefs about what might be seen as socially “acceptable.” This might cause a teen to act in ways that aren’t in their best interest. For instance, a teen might go to extreme lengths to avoid being exposed, judged, or shamed for having a mental health condition – including resisting treatment.
Sometimes, a teen may not even fully understand that they feel this way because of social attitudes towards mental health conditions, but this can make overcoming guilt even more difficult. What’s more, stigma not only affects teens receiving mental health treatment – it can also impact their loved ones, potentially leading to even more feelings of guilt.7
How to Fight Mental Health Stigma for Teens
Normalize Mental Health Conditions
The National Institute of Mental Health’s data shows that nearly 50% of teenagers will experience a mental health condition of some sort – with roughly 22% of these teens having a severe impairment. So, clearly, mental health issues are by no means a rare occurrence. Openly discussing mental health issues and how common they are can reduce stigma. For example, a parent can explain how they too might struggle with their emotions.
Educate Yourself and Your Teen
Reliable information on mental health conditions can help reduce the impact of stigma and increase the chance that a teen will seek support. Additionally, factual information can help families better understand where issues come from and how they can affect emotions and actions.
Government and research organizations can provide detailed information on mental health conditions and how to reduce stigma. These include the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Speaking to a mental health professional can also ensure you’re given accurate, up-to-date information about conditions and ways to fight stigma.
Be Mindful of the Language You Use
Our brains are naturally wired to associate words we perceive as “negative” with who we are as people when they’re used descriptively. Therefore, to overcome stigma, it’s important to be aware of how we speak about mental health conditions. For example, aim to avoid using…
- Stigmatizing language: For instance, saying “psycho,” or “nervous wreck”
- Labeling language: Such as a “depressed person,” or “mentally ill person” – instead they are “someone living with depression” or “a person with a mental health condition”
- Blaming language: For example, saying “Perhaps if you worked a bit harder you would feel more positive.” Acknowledging how mental health conditions lead to certain behaviors can reduce stigma and promote more positive outcomes.
Openly Discuss Treatment and Its Benefits
When people talk about making an appointment to see their doctor about a physical problem, there’s no sense of judgment. Yet, when we speak about receiving mental health treatment, we frequently encounter stigma. Mental health should be seen in the same light as physical, and discussing how therapy works can improve understanding. The following are some common forms of therapy for mental health conditions and how they work: CBT is proven to be effective in treating many teen mental health conditions. It works by targeting teens’ thoughts and actions, identifying negative patterns, and helping them build healthy ways of coping.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation:
TMS is a non-invasive therapy that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in specific brain areas. By doing so, it helps improve mood and treat mental health conditions that haven’t responded to other treatments, such as treatment-resistant depression.
Overcoming Guilt About Mental Health Care for Teens
Following the steps for fighting mental health stigma can go a long way toward overcoming guilt about mental health care for teens. However, guilt can be deep-rooted, so the following tips can also help.
Build Self-Compassion for Overcoming Guilt
Guilt is often rooted in the feeling that we should be or act in a certain way. Yet, mental health conditions are a perfect storm of genetics, biology, and experiences. Therefore, having a mental health condition and needing treatment for it is not a teen’s fault. It’s important to understand what is in our control and what’s not – you and your child are doing your best to cope with the situation at hand. Remember this, and try to be kind to yourselves during moments of self-judgment.
Therapy for Guilt Around Seeking Mental Health Care
Unfortunately, it’s not just stigma that can lead to feelings of guilt and shame in teenagers. Certain mental health conditions, like depression, can also contribute to these feelings. Therefore, for some teenagers, talk therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can help with reframing guilt-inducing thought patterns and lead to more self-compassionate ways of seeing themselves.10
Mindfulness for Reducing Guilt
Studies have shown that mindfulness can help a teen with shame and guilt live more in the present moment, become more aware of their feelings, and reduce the intensity of their emotions. While therapies such as mindfulness-based therapy (MBT) can be highly useful for teens who experience guilt, they can also start to build mindfulness techniques into their daily routine, such as deep breathing, meditation, mindful walking, grounding exercises, and so on.11
Challenge Negative Self-Talk
Guilt can be caused by and contribute to negative self-talk. Negative self-talk can feel like we’re carrying around a bully in our minds. As a result, a teen may believe that guilty or shameful thoughts are accurate reflections of who they are as a person. It’s important to challenge these thoughts by pinpointing when they’re happening and creating more accurate replacements, such as “I’m not a bad person for needing support. I’m doing the right thing for myself and my loved ones.”
Expressing Emotions Through Creative Outlets
Activities such as journaling have been shown to help teens express and reduce intense feelings, such as guilt and shame. Journaling is an excellent outlet for such emotions as it allows teens to release their feelings without fear of repercussion or judgement. It also helps give them a clearer perspective on their emotions and beliefs, reducing any stigma around receiving mental health support. Other creative outlets, such as art and music, also allow teens to constructively manage their emotions.12
Social Support for Increasing Perspective
Social support can be protective of teen mental health – and can also help them see situations from a more balanced perspective. If your child is experiencing guilt around receiving treatment, helping them find local support groups for their condition can help. Once given the opportunity to share information and hear about others’ experiences, a teen can see that there’s nothing to feel guilty about. Other people their age are going through the same issues as them.13
Aside from these tips for overcoming guilt about receiving mental health care, professional mental health advice can guide you on how to support a child through mental health stigma.
When to Seek Help in Breaking the Stigma of Mental Health Care for Children
It’s important that a teen receives the treatment they need in a timely manner to prevent long-term impacts on their mental and physical health and future success. If you’re concerned that stigma and guilt around receiving mental health care is preventing your child from getting the help and support they need, there is professional guidance available to you.
Mission Prep can help. Our team of trained professionals is familiar with educating families about mental health stigma and can reduce guilt by showing consistent compassion and care. We offer outpatient and residential treatment options for a variety of teen mental health conditions in various locations, tailoring each program to each teen’s unique needs. Negative attitudes towards mental health do not exist within our practices, but we can help a teen and their family protect themselves from these in the outside world. Our team is available 24/7 to answer any concerns. Contact us to learn more.
References
- World Health Organization. (2024, June 26). The overwhelming case for ending stigma and discrimination in mental health. World Health Organization.
- Corrigan, P. W., & Rao, D. (2012). On the Self-Stigma of Mental Illness: Stages, Disclosure, and Strategies for Change. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Revue Canadienne de Psychiatrie, 57(8), 464. https://doi.org/10.1177/070674371205700804
- Andersen, M. M., Varga, S., & Folker, A. P. (2022). On the definition of stigma. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 28(5), 847. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13684
- Thornicroft, G., Mehta, N., Clement, S., Evans-Lacko, S., Doherty, M., Rose, D., Koschorke, M., Shidhaye, R., O’Reilly, C., & Henderson, C. (2016). Evidence for effective interventions to reduce mental-health-related stigma and discrimination. The Lancet, 387(10023), 1123-1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00298-6
- Dolezal, L. (2022). Shame anxiety, stigma and clinical encounters. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 28(5), 854. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13744
- Office of Children’s Mental Health. (2020). Eliminating stigma: Supporting child well-being through eliminating stigma. Wisconsin Department of Health Services. https://children.wi.gov/Documents/ResearchData/OCMH%202020%20Fact%20Sheet%20Eliminating%20Stigma.pdf
- American Psychiatric Association. (n.d.). Stigma and discrimination. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/stigma-and-discrimination
- Greenstein, L. (2017, October 11). 9 ways to fight mental health stigma. National Alliance on Mental Illness. Retrieved from https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/October-2017/9-Ways-to-Fight-Mental-Health-Stigma
- Cox, C., & Fritz, Z. (2022). Presenting complaint: Use of language that disempowers patients. BMJ, 377, e066720. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-066720
- Szentágotai-Tătar, A., Chiș, A., Vulturar, R., Dobrean, A., Cândea, D. M., & Miu, A. C. (2015). Shame and Guilt-Proneness in Adolescents: Gene-Environment Interactions. PLoS ONE, 10(7), e0134716. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134716
- Hafenbrack, A. C., LaPalme, M. L., & Solal, I. (2022). Mindfulness meditation reduces guilt and prosocial reparation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 123(1), 28-54. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000298
- Stanford Children’s Health. (n.d.). Journaling for mental health. Stanford Children’s Health. Retrieved March 19, 2025, from https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=journaling-for-mental-health-1-4552
- Richard, J., Rebinsky, R., Suresh, R., Kubic, S., Carter, A., A Cunningham, J. E., Ker, A., Williams, K., & Sorin, M. (2022). Scoping review to evaluate the effects of peer support on the mental health of young adults. BMJ Open, 12(8), e061336. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061336
