Over time, society improved the way it understands and treats mental illness, but long-standing stigma can still be heard in everyday casual language. The stigma is heard in words like crazy, nutty, unbalanced or delusional. Patrick Corrigan, a distinguished professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, spoke with Eight Forty-Eight, as part of the Out of the Shadows series, about the ways society continues to stigmatize and marginalize those who are mentally ill. Corrigan most recently explored the role community organizations – like churches – play in defining and changing attitudes toward mental illness. His research took him to some black churches on Chicago’s West Side. 

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