Although nearly one in five Americans will personally experience a mental illness in his or her lifetime, myths and misconceptions about mental illnesses persist. This lack of understanding has stigmatized these very real and physical illnesses. The Surgeon General of the United States reported in 1999 that stigma was the single largest barrier to the successful recovery of people with mental illness, making it harder for people to get treatment as well as find housing, jobs and friends.

Three years before the Surgeon General's landmark report, in 1996, Lichtenstein Creative Media, conducted groundbreaking research into stigma. Hired to develop an anti-stigma campaign for the City of New York, LCM engaged top advertising executives and market researchers (the kind of people who work for Nike and Coca-Cola) to find out what stigma really is, how widespread it is, and how to defeat it. It was the first major research into what people in a single city thought about mental illness and what it would take to change their attitudes.  (Click here to read and see more.)