Managing Mental Health and Stigma: The Role of Drama and Stage Performances

Abstract

Mental health stigma remains a persistent barrier to care, recovery, social inclusion, and human rights. Although education-based campaigns have improved public knowledge, evidence increasingly suggests that knowledge alone is insufficient to reduce prejudice, discriminatory conduct, and internalized shame. This article examines how drama, theatre, psychodrama, and stage performance can contribute to managing mental health and reducing stigma. Drawing on a narrative review of peer-reviewed studies, public health evidence, and applied theatre examples, the article argues that performance-based approaches are effective because they combine three mechanisms: mental health education, embodied social contact, and collective reflection. Evidence from a one-woman theatrical performance on bipolar disorder, a community-led theatre intervention in rural Uganda, systematic reviews of anti-stigma strategies, and psychodrama meta-analytic evidence suggests that drama can humanize mental illness, support help-seeking, create safe distance for difficult conversations, and model recovery. However, drama-based interventions require ethical safeguards, cultural adaptation, collaboration with people with lived experience, and rigorous evaluation beyond immediate attitude change. The article concludes that stage performance should be understood not as entertainment added to mental health programming, but as a potentially transformative public health, therapeutic, and community-engagement method.