Janice Lam
University College London (Psychology), University of Hong Kong (Medicine)
Janice Lam is a student who has recently graduated with First Class Honours in BSc Psychology at UCL, and started studying Medicine at HKU since September, 2017. Throughout university, Janice has been actively involved in promoting mental health, for example as a project manager at Rethink Mental Illnesses (a UK mental health charity), and as an honorary administrative assistant for Women’s Health Psychology Service at University College London Hospitals. From her first hand experience with mental health patients, Janice noticed that despite widespread anti-stigmatisation campaigns and efforts in London and worldwide, public stigmatisation towards mental patients is still extremely prevalent. Stigma’s debilitating effects towards patients motivated Janice to focus her final year dissertation on investigating whether dehumanised perception was involved in the social distances the public invokes towards mental health patients. She found this to be true in her study, and she hopes to utilise this finding to inspire new directions for interventions aiming to reduce mental illness stigmatisation.
