Research shows those who have disclosed aspects of their mental illness report a sense of personal empowerment and an increase in confidence to seek and achieve individual goals. Patrick Corrigan discusses Honest Open Proud, a program developed by him and his team. Honest Open Proud is a three-session group program run usually by pairs of trained leaders with lived experiences with the objective of reducing the self-stigma associated with mental illness.
Patrick Corrigan is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Corrigan is a licensed clinical psychologist setting up and providing services for people with serious mental illnesses and their families for more than 30 years. Corrigan is the Director of the National Consortium on Stigma and Empowerment (NCSE), a research Center supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Central to NCSE is the Center on Adherence and Self-Determination (CASD) supported as a developing center in services research by NIMH. Corrigan’s recent work has focused on developing and evaluating interventions meant to challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness. With support from CASD, Corrigan and his team have developed a program meant to eliminate the self-stigma of mental illness, the Honest, Open, Proud Program. Corrigan is a prolific researcher having authored or edited twelve books and more than 300 papers.