Issues in consumer mental health information.

Consumer health information as applied to mental health includes areas such as the diagnosis, management, and treatment of mental illness, as well as self-help, emotional wellness, and the relationship between life events, stress, and disease. This paper presents issues specific to the provision of mental health information to the layperson, e.g., confidentiality, literacy, competence, the social stigma of mental illness, the state of the art in psychiatry, popular psychology, and treatment fads. The development of a community education pamphlet illustrates how one organization addressed these issues.