Table 2.

Themes and exemplar quotes related to environment-level and individual-level felt stigma.

Theme	Exemplar quotes N (%)
Environment-level
People with mental illness are dangerous and should be   avoided	5 (5.9%) Like if they hear something on the news about a guy doing – shooting someone. They don’t think about, ‘Oh, maybe he has a mental disorder or something like that.’ You know, she’s like, ‘He’s crazy.’ That’s the first thing they think, ‘Oh he’s crazy.’ It has no – yeah, he needs to go to jail. There’s no healing that person. There’s no need to help him.… So there is a stigma.
People with mental illness are lazy or to blame for their   own suffering	13 (15.5%) People use [depression] as an excuse or something like that. …As far as treatment goes, oh people say you’re depressed but you can just get over it…. That’s what I was always hearing – basically I cause it [depression] for myself. If I’m depressed and I stay inside.
Fear that ‘saying the wrong thing’ to a mental health   provider will have negative consequences for the family	6 (7.1%) Say the wrong thing to a person about your child and next thing you know you could lose them.
Individual-level felt stigma
Informal supports	24 (28.6%) I don’t speak to anybody and people don’t understand my situation. They just think I’m just crazy and wild and nuts and they think it is fun and games and they don’t understand that I’m having issues with that.
Formal supports	8 (9.5%) I’ve been getting treated here since I was a baby. It’s comfortable. I don’t like new places. … Yeah, I’m familiar with [the system]; I know everybody here. I grew up here, so anywhere else would just be strange. I wanted to punch [the therapist] in his face. He was busy judging me instead of treating me.