**3.4. Approaches for reducing stigma in mental diseases**

**1.** Educational approaches to the dangers challenge false stereotypes about mental illness and change them to real knowledge. The training strategies included public service announcements, books, flyers, films, videos, Web pages, podcasts, virtual reality, and other audiovisual support [39].

diseases. Problems associated with intensive obsessions and compulsions affect social functions. Symptoms cause the individual to spend time with his or her family or work life. For this reason, the possibilities of positive social interaction and functional experience are reduced [45]. Anxiety may accompany obsessions and compulsions. Individuals feel themselves anxious and nervous. For this reason, the physical and social environment has an important effect on the emotional state of the individual. Both the environmental parameters and the symptoms affect each other. The anxiety that may arise from symptoms of the individual can be controlled by physical environment facilities and positive

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Stigma is a social force associated with people with many different health situations, feature, and social structures. Moreover, literature review shows that mental problems, sexuality, race, and STDs can also be regarded as related subjects [46]. Symptoms are not the only reason for the problems that people with psychiatric illnesses face in life. When problems these individuals live through are taken into account, stigma can be called a "second illness" [47, 48]. Individuals with psychiatric problems experience discriminatory behaviors and emotional acts in different forms. These labeling acts and situations create barriers against life opportunities for individuals. People who go through with stigmas might internalize these prejudices, in which case they start to believe that these beliefs are completely true and that creates some

Stigma affects the people with OCD, and individuals might find themselves feeling under the weather or feel fear due to mental problem diagnosis, which can later affect the attitude toward the treatment and their motivation [47]. We see stigma as one of the many barriers we encounter on OCD treatment. Individuals with OCD go through a fear of stigma which can be described as a behavior to avoid the necessary help due to fear of a psychiatric diag-

social support.

more barriers for them [49].

nosis [50, 51] (**Figure 4**).

**Figure 4.** Obsessions and compulsions are related to anxiety and beliefs.

