Stigma continues to be a major issue for people with emotional, psychological and mental health (EPMH) disabilities, a new report has revealed.

According to the report, which was published by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the National Disability Authority (NDA), disability is understood as ‘a limitation in a person's activities arising from both the person's conditions and aspects of the environment'.

At least one in three people with disabilities in Ireland has an EPMH disability.

The report found that stigma is a big issue for many people with EPMH disabilities. While over 80% said that their family, friends and healthcare providers were supportive, when it came to other service providers, employers and strangers, support fell to between 45% and 58%.

Furthermore, almost 40% of people with EPMH disabilities admitted to avoiding certain activities because of the attitudes of other people. Among those with mobility-related disabilities, this figure was just 22%.

The report emphasised that stigma among the general population must be dealt with.

"This issue needs to be addressed in a number of ways - through the education system, by means of general educational campaigns targeting adults, through training for those who deal with the public, through implementation of equality policies in organisations and through equality legislation to protect people with a disability from discrimination," the report said.

Meanwhile when asked to what extent they experienced difficulties in their daily lives because of their condition, 36% said they experienced ‘a lot' of difficulties or have some activities they cannot do at all.

High levels of difficulty were more commonly found in people with bipolar disorder, those with more than one type of disability and those in poor health.

When it came to work, just 18% of those being interviewed were currently in employment, although at least two in three had been employed at some stage in their past.

Of those who were employed in the past, at least three-quarters left work because of their disability, most often poor health.

Among those not currently employed, over half said they would be interested in getting a job if the circumstances were right.

The report also noted a big overlap between EPMH disability and other types of disability. The data indicates that almost nine in 10 people with an EPMH disability also have at least one other type of disability.

"The overlap is partly due to the impact of physical health problems on mental health and partly due to the higher risk of developing physical health problems among those with mental health issues," the report noted.

Interestingly, if a person with an EPMH disability had other types of disability as well, they were more likely to regard the other disability as the ‘main' one.

The main areas of overlap in relation to people with EPMH disabilities were mobility and dexterity, remembering and concentrating and chronic pain. In fact, around half of those with EPMH disabilities also had mobility and dexterity disabilities, while a similar proportion had remembering and concentrating disabilities. Just under half of those with EPMH disabilities also had pain disability, the report noted.

"Two issues which emerged throughout the study were the strong overlap between physical disability and EPMH disability and the importance of attitudes of other people. Both individual factors (such as general health and presence of other types of disability) and environmental factors (including the attitudes of other people) have a significant impact on the wellbeing and participation of people with EPMH disability," commented the report's author, Dorothy Watson, of the ESRI.