There was a time when it seemed like every morning I would switch on the morning TV and hear about another murder by a schizophrenic. Not a very settling way to start the day. I also could not escape this image in the tabloids, popular TV and seemingly everywhere else. We were nutters, psychos, untouchable.
Shots of mental health wards were always of shuffling sad figures, the images and stereotypes that the media deals in were brought up again and again. I would overhear conversations about it in the street. It became highly embarassing to be a mental patient... I was ashamed. Hardly the sort of view of your position in society that is conducive to good mental health.
Public ignorance is rampant, not helped by the likes of Marjorie Wallace, and the Daily Mail.
If the public knew the facts, that the vast majority of mental patients are harmless, and that schizophrenia does not always reduce people to a permanently confused state for example, then the stereotypes might begin to fall.
So a less ignorant media might, in my view, be a good place to start.