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One thing that I found very interesting about our discussion of mental health, and stigmatization, was the difference between being diagnosed with a mental illness, and just have a unique personality trait. With a physical illness, it is often much easier to determine whether an individual has an illness of not. While the symptoms may vary from person to person, more often than not there is not much of a question as to whether or not the individual is ill. However, with mental illness, it seems much harder to determine whether an individual is ill or not, and the defining line seems to be somewhat arbitrarily drawn. Wisely, no one asked my opinion when they were deciding what the determining factors should be for diagnosing someone with a particular mental disorder. However, from my limited experience, it seems like there is an awful amount of gray area around that threshold that can lead to one individual being diagnosed with a mental disease, while another is reportedly normal, even though there are few differences between their symptoms. 
 
I feel like this gray area is one of the major reasons behind the stigma that exists against mentally ill individuals. It is very easy for the individual who is on the verge of having a mental disorder, but does not have the diagnosis, to look down on another individual who does have the diagnosis. Similarly, when seeing an individual on the street that seems to have a mental illness, I personally would be less likely to stigmatize that indidivual if I knew for a fact that they had a diagnosis, and they were receiving treatment. I’m not suggesting that everyone who has a mental illness should have to disclose that fact to everyone they meet. If there is some way to reduce stigmatization, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I don’t believe it’s possible to get rid of stigmatization completely, due to the overly curious and judgemental nature of society.