The Mental Health Commission of Canada and British Columbia's Interior Health Authority have partnered to hold workshops to try to reduce stigma associated with mental illness.

Emergency-room workers in seven hospitals and community clinics throughout B.C. were offered the Understanding the Impact of Stigma workshops.

Cheryl Whittleton, a nurse at the Castlegar and District Health Centre, which piloted the program, told CBC News and The Current about her sense of the problem.

"What I've noticed over my last 20 years of nursing in critical care areas is that mental health clients would present and first off, we labeled them as 'the schizophrenic in bed one,' 'the depression in bed two'," she said.

"In the past we've used language such as 'frequent flyers' to identify mental health patients that present frequently to emergency rooms accessing care."

Recognizing that the health-care workers were working with people and not dealing with illnesses, the language changed so patients are now addressed as "the patient with schizophrnia, not the schizophrenic," Whittleton explained.

"In the past, they were considered more as a mental health issue, but with the implementation of triage levels, we're recognizing that mental health issues do fall into crisis, and they do supercede patients that have physical complaints that have a lower level of triage."

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Clarification: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the partnership workshops between the Mental Health Commission of Canada and British Columbia's Interior Health Authority was announced this month. In fact, a press release issued this month was reviewing the Understanding the Impact of Stigma workshops, which wrapped up in late fall of 2010.