Saul and the Not-So-Holy Ghost: 1 Samuel 16:14–23 and Ghost-Induced Illness

The representation of mental illness is part of many video games; however, it is often accompanied by stigmatization of and discrimination against those who are affected. Recently, a more positive approach has been found, including a dimensional representation of mental disorders such as depression or anxiety, especially in games developed by independent developers. The study examined the most popular video games of 2018 and 2019 based on their representation of mental illness in a mixed-methods approach. A quantitative coding process examining general aspects of the games, the characters affected, and the illness representation is followed by a qualitative video game analysis of the games in the sample with a dimensional representation of mental illness. It was found that 16 of the 74 games examined included characters who were affected by mental illnesses. For the most part, mental illness is an essential aspect of the games analyzed in the sample represented by the main characters. However, the depiction of mental illness often lacks depth and dimensionality. Two examples in the study offer a dimensional representation that includes mental illness as characters, as part of the environment and atmosphere, and provides illness-related advice as part of the gameplay. These findings can be helpful for developing games with the potential to reduce discrimination and stigmatization of mental illness and those affected in the future by pointing out aspects leading to a more dimensional and empathetic portrayal of mental illness in existing games. Additionally, the category system used in this study is adaptable to future qualitative research on mental illness representation in video games.

ABSTRACTCritical analysis of representations of mental illness in television programming are woefully lacking, due in part to the limited existence of major characters with mental illness in entertainment media. Much of the theoretical work done on the topic has relied upon parasocial relationships the audience may develop with characters with mental illness, and normative determinations of the positive or negative nature of representations of mental illness. Fox Network's show Empire provides an opportunity to examine the representation of mental illness through a major character, Andre Lyon. Through narrative analysis, the author argues that Empire presents a complex and sometimes problematic representation of bipolar disorder. This depiction provides the opportunity to explore the intersectionality of race, class, and gender with the representation of mental illness, and this nuanced view may offer audiences the narrative probability and fidelity needed to guide the ways we understand and interact with individuals who have a mental illness.

Workman Arts, a Toronto‐based theatre and visual arts company with a 20‐year history, provides a rich site for re‐imagining stigmatised representations of mental illness. Writing and performing against a long tradition of representing people with mental illnesses as incoherent speakers and visually different, company members seek to re‐imagine mental illness on stage in the light of lived experience. Offering high‐calibre arts training programmes and a lively series of arts events and performances, Workman Arts provides the foundations for both amateur and experienced artists to develop as artists and showcase their work. The company also offers works that provide both nuanced and challenging representations of mental illness that seek to engage and educate a range of public audiences. While the membership of over 300 draws primarily from people with experience of mental health treatment, the company takes no prescribed stand on the value of medical practice, nor purports to offer dramatherapy. Aligned in some respects with the disability arts movement, Workman Arts nevertheless focuses on mental illness issues in particular. This paper provides an outline history of the company, highlights important works and analyses its educational mandate and practices.

Research Article| September 01 2007 The Erratic Front: Youtube and Representations of Mental Illness Peter Wollheim Peter Wollheim PETER WOLLHEIM, PhD, is an associate professor at Boise State University and co-chair of the Idaho commission on suicide prevention. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2007) 35 (2): 21–26. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2007.35.2.21 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Peter Wollheim; The Erratic Front: Youtube and Representations of Mental Illness. Afterimage 1 September 2007; 35 (2): 21–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2007.35.2.21 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2007 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

ABSTRACTMuch of the extant research on representations of mental illness in the media have focused on stigmatization. The negative effects of these stigmatizing portrayals on individuals with mental illness are serious. However, recent scholarship has identified another phenomenon in the mediated portrayal of mental illness whereby these conditions are trivialized. As opposed to stigmatizing portrayals that make people with mental illness seem violent and incompetent, media portrayals that trivialize mental illnesses often treat the symptoms of these conditions (e.g., organizational ability for people with obsessive compulsive disorder or high energy levels for people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) as benefits, thereby diminishing the seriousness of these conditions. The aim of the present study was to develop a reliable and valid scale for assessing how individuals perceive symptoms of mental illnesses as benefits (and, thereby, trivialize these illnesses). Results across three studies support the existence of a reliable and valid measure whereby symptoms demark individuals with a mental illness as receiving a benefit. By establishing this scale, researchers will be better suited to assess the potential intersections and interaction of processes related to mental illness trivialization and stigmatization, both through media portrayals and through everyday interactions.

My research explores how individuals with mental illness express themselves online and off. Through digital ethnography, including interviews with Instagram users and manual collection of public content on Instagram, I have holistically examined the experience of mental illness as expressed through social media. This user-centric approach reveals and addresses the limitations of computational techniques, which my dissertation work will address by combining qualitative methods with generative algorithms to explore new 'ways of seeing' mental illness. I will create new tools enabling users to generate representations from their own posts in support of creating new representations of mental illness, advancing algorithmic fairness, and confronting technological forms of oppression online.

The metanarrative of biomedicine and "psy" discipline (psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry etc.) asserts that cannabis use is one of the fundamental causes of mental illness among different men in the Rushinga district of Zimbabwe. These metanarratives, however, appear to have universalised, medicalised and marginalised the conception and representation of mental illness as enmeshed in local epistemologies and ontologies of mental illness. Based on local epistemologies, elders in Diwa largely trace mental illness to discursive sociocultural explanations rarely linked to cannabis use. This paper answers the central question: How is the use of cannabis by different persons related to mental illness in the Rushinga district? I argue that community members, health providers and police officers want to think of persons, especially men, with mental illness as "mad" and immoral cannabis users who brought illnesses upon themselves and lack personal responsibility based on Western neoliberal and biomedical metanarratives. However, this framing is not helpful, it is detrimental to treatment and social reputation, as it bypasses local cultural explanations that may be protective and that offer clearer guidelines for treatment.

Media are a major purveyor of information about mental health. Recognizing what messages media are disseminating about mental illness, therefore, is a step toward raising mental health literacy in a population. Most research about media coverage of mental illness, however, has taken place in Western nations. Differences in cultural views of mental illness and severely strained mental health-care resources in sub-Saharan African make it likely that media coverage of mental illness there will differ substantially from Western contexts. This study investigated the coverage of mental illness in the two largest circulation newspapers in Uganda: The Monitor and The New Vision. Analysis of the entire contents of every issue of both papers from January 1, 2017 to June 30, 2019 revealed just 53 articles addressing mental illness. Although types of mental illness addressed did not differ greatly from coverage in Western newspapers, causes to which mental illness was attributed included war, poverty, and witchcraft, none of which appears in content analyses in other contexts. Also, different than Western media, most articles were thematically rather than episodically framed, especially in the government-owned paper, and individuals with mental illness themselves were regularly cited.

Trapped by Gender: The Paradoxical Portrayal Of Gender And Mental Illness In Anglophone North American Magazines: 1983-2012

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on representations of mental illness on U.S. network television, particularly the “police procedural” Elementary. As a modern interpretation of the Sherlock Holmes character, Elementary is unique in emphasizing the detective’s struggles with drug addiction and mental illness, as well as a long road of recovery where intellectual labor is instrumental and “therapeutic” (rather than stressful and alienating). Despite its critical acclaim, Elementary’s progressive portrayals of symptoms of mental illness in Holmes are complicated by the series’s stereotypical depiction of villains that are “mad men,” “lunatics,” and “psychopaths” driven by financial gain and individual greed. The “acceptability” of mental illness in the series is measured by a character’s compliance with the dominant social order. While Elementary provides some positive messages about mental illness, its socioeconomic commentaries individualize “madness,” violence, and the pitfalls of late capitalism to support an increasingly problematic narrative of neoliberalism and mental health.

“‘Nobody told me’: Chicana Women’s Madness and Mourning in Sandra Cisneros’s Have You Seen Marie?” employs interdisciplinary research to understand Sandra Cisneros’ tale of women’s mental illness in Have You Seen Marie?. Building on Marta Caminero-Santangelo’s critique of the inequitable treatment of mental illness in literary criticism of women’s writing, I argue that Cisneros draws awareness to the distinct challenges that Chicanas face while struggling with mental illness. Contextualizing Cisneros’ representation of the grief a Catholic Chicana woman experiences after losing her mother, I draw on the work of scholars from theology, psychology, sociology, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and disability studies to further understand the impact of colonization on familial gender roles, the importance of la Virgen de Guadalupe, and representations of mental illness.

The present study examined messages about mental illness in 14 contemporary Christian self-help bestsellers. Content analysis revealed that most texts focused upon depression. Categories of textual units included Underlying Assumptions Regarding Depression, Representations of Depression, Roots/Causes/Reasons for Depression, and Christian Responses to Depression. Demonic influence was the most frequently cited reason for depression. Other reasons included negative cognitions, failure as a Christian, and negative emotions. Christian responses to depression included trusting God, religious activity, and individual willpower. Discussion of these results focused upon the problematic impact of these messages upon individuals with depression, and upon suggestions for reducing mental illness stigma in religious communities.

This chapter will argue that the representation of mental illness in The Archers is unrepresentative in a number of ways. Sufferers of long-term mental health problems are not portrayed in the programme and mental illness is often used as a narrative device, leading to a bias towards circumstantial, single-episode mental ill health storylines. This chapter will also cover the portrayal of Helen Archer’s mental health during and after suffering emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, arguing that it suffers from a number of shortcomings.

Stigmatization of persons with mental illness may be perpetuated through media depictions. This study analyzed changes in the depiction of mental illness by Bermudian newspapers over 20 years. All articles about mental illness in Bermuda's newspapers in 1991, 2001, and 2011 (N=277) were coded for composition, language, consultations and quotations, and content. A significant increase in mental health professional consultation was demonstrated. Articles with a negative overall tone constituted the largest percentage of all articles (40%) and of articles in 2001 (43%) and 2011 (42%). A significant difference was found in primary theme; between 1991 and 2011, articles with an education and information theme dropped from 40% to 18% and articles about violent crime increased from 12% to 18%. The results may necessitate action from the island's advocacy groups. The findings have implications for discussion with the national press.

Background The press’ representation of mental illness often includes images of people as dangerous, and there is evidence that this contributes to stigmatising understandings about mental illness. Little is known about how newspapers portray mental health on their Twitter feeds. Aim To explore the representation of mental health in the UK national press’ Twitter feeds. Method Content analysis was used to code the Tweets produced by UK national press in two time periods, 2014 and 2017. Chi-square analysis was used to identify trends. Results The analysis identified a significant reduction in the proportion of tweets that were characterised as Bad News between 2014 and 2017 (χ 2 = 14.476, d.f.=1, p < 0.001) and a significant increase in the tweets characterised as Understanding (χ 2 = 9.398, d.f.=1, p = 0.002). However, in 2017, 24% of the tweets were still characterised as Bad News. Readers did not retweet Bad News stories significantly more frequently than they were produced. Conclusions There is a positive direction of travel in the representations of mental health in the Twitter feeds of the UK press, but the level of Bad News stories remains a concern.