Portrayal Of Mental Illness Research Articles

The Portrayal of Suicide and Mental Illness: A Province-Wide Survey of Nova Scotia

This study tested the feasibility of a surveillance system of the media's portrayal of suicide and mental illness in Nova Scotia. The general public was asked to monitor nonfiction media in the province using standardized checklists over 6 months. The checklists were available on the World Wide Web and various locations in the community, and participants could identify either appropriate or inappropriate coverage. The researchers received 414 submissions covering 366 media items (304 on mental illness and 62 on suicide) during the 6-month survey: 311 from print media and 55 from radio and television. Ratings showed good agreement. On most dimensions, the majority of media items were of good quality. However, details about getting appropriate help were included in only 8.5% of media reports. Items covering suicide were 3.5 times as likely to contain inappropriate content as those on mental illness (95% CI = 1.5–8.0). These results are guiding the development of media guidelines in Nova Scotia. The study also showed that the present methodology can be used to monitor any subsequent effect on the portrayal of mental illness and suicide in the media.

The old and mentally ill in Australia: Doubly stigmatised

This review proposes that the stigma attached to being old and having a mental illness has a disproportionate impact on those who are categorised as both. A brief historical account is given of what it means to have a mental illness and, separately, what it means to be old. Next, the stigmatising attitudes and their implications for the two separate groups will be reviewed, with discussion of the Australian media's portrayal of mental illness and old age. It is further argued that the implications of double stigma may be multiplicative, having even more of an impact on elderly mentally ill people than a separate consideration of these categories might suggest. Finally, some suggestions are made for beginning to address the double stigma attached to being both old and having a mental illness in Australia.

Psychiatry in contemporary Irish cinema: a qualitative study.

Media portrayals of mental illness and psychiatry have a considerable impact on public perceptions of mental health issues. This paper aims to focus on portrayals of psychiatry and psychiatrists in four contemporary Irish feature films in order to make wider points on this theme. Contemporary Irish feature-films that made substantial reference to psychiatry, psychiatrists or mental health in Ireland were identified though electronic searches and consultation with the Film Institute of Ireland. Selected films were viewed. Electronic searches were performed in the medical and film literatures, with broad search terms related to film, psychiatry, psychiatrists or mental health in Ireland. Additional books and papers were identified by tracking back through references and consulting with colleagues. The portrayal of psychiatrists in film is closely related to the development of both twentieth century psychiatry and twentieth century cinema. In common with recent European films, certain recent Irish films have tended to show psychiatrists as sympathetic, humane individuals (with some notable exceptions). While there have been a number of portrayals of dissocial personally disorder and various states of chronic alienation in recent Irish film, there have been fewer portrayals of psychosis or learning disability. Recent Irish films emphasise the role of alcohol in causing and perpetuating psychological distress. They generally provide unflinching portrayals of the effects of psychological distress and alienation, suicide and substance abuse at individual, family and community levels; nonetheless, there is still a regrettable tendency for films to associate mental illness with dissocial behaviour. The portrayal of mental health issues in film presents both challenges and opportunities to film-makers, mental health service-users and general audiences alike. It is to be hoped that the recent trend towards realistic explorations of mental health issues in many European films continues into the future. Increased research in this area would help clarify the role of cinema in shaping public understandings of mental illness, and may also help identify additional ways of addressing stigma in the future.

People Like Ourselves: Portrayals of Mental Illness in the Movies

People Like Ourselves: Portrayals of Mental Illness in the Movies

'About a year before the breakdown I was having symptoms': sadness, pathology and the Australian newspaper media.

Portrayals of mental illness in the media reportedly highlight violence and crime by the 'mentally ill'. Using a discourse analytic approach we investigated representations of 'depression' in the print media in Australia during the year 2000. Unlike other 'mental illnesses', in the case of depression the media stress the need for the protection of the sufferer, rather than others. Three key discourses are identified - the biomedical, the psycho-social and the administrative/managerial - which work to normalise depression by presenting it as beyond the control of the afflicted individual: a consequence of faulty brain chemistry or the product of social conditions. These discourses work together to produce unhappiness as individualised pathology in need of management through biological, psychological or social structural controls.

Mental illness and the media

Stigmatising opinions about mental illness are more common among young people than older people (Yarney, 1999). Whether the media should carry responsibility for this was the subject of the College's 13th Christmas Lecture for Young People. Over 300 school children gathered in central London to take part in a debate on the role of the media in the portrayal of mental illness. Alison Lowe introduced the debate by illustrating how common mental illness is. She invited everyone to look at the eight people sitting around them before adding, “In your lifetimes at least one of you will see a psychiatrist”.

Ethical Responses to Media Depictions of Mental Illness: An Advocacy Approach

The media, through its immense influence and frequent, often inaccurate, portrayals of mental illness, helps engender negative, incorrect perceptions about counselors and their clients. Ethical codes offer little direction to counselors wishing to confront this problem. A change‐promoting response demands that counselors move beyond traditional roles to more proactive behavior.

Stigma 1, Psychiatrists 0

I think I can honestly say that I am a seasoned complainer, although I am careful not to attempt to be Mary Whitehouse and I do not assiduously scan the media looking for trouble. My interest in the area of stigmatization started with an episode of the TV drama Boon, where they suddenly had a character become ‘mentally ill’ so that he could conveniently shoot the hero to achieve a cliff-hanging end-of-series episode. Subsequently I specialised in the portrayal of mental illness in dramatic productions, joined the Public Education Campaign divisional network and had some media training. I have been listed as an expert in the portrayal of mental illness for five years but have never been approached for my advice on this area. However, following this year's announcement of the new Royal College of Psychiatrists' campaign ‘Changing Minds: Every Family in the Land’, I obtained all the names and addresses in Deborah Hart and Jill Phillipson's article above and stood ready to ‘do my bit’ for truth and honesty.

The portrayal of mental illness on prime-time television

In this content analysis of television, the portrayal of persons with mental disorders was highly correlated with the portrayal of violent crime. The mentally ill were found to be nearly 10 times more violent than the general population of television characters, and 10 to 20 times more violent (during a two week sample) than the mentally ill in the U.S. population (over the course of an entire year). The mentally ill on television were also judged to have a negative impact on society and a negative quality of life. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Popular Media Portrayals of Mental Illness

Popular Media Portrayals of Mental Illness

Portrayal of mental illness in Canadian newspapers.

The present article reports results from a content analysis of 103 newspaper reports taken from eight major Canadian newspapers, and selected at random from the Canadian Newspaper Index. The portrayal of mental illness and mentally ill persons in these reports was compared with that in samples of articles taken from two comparison mental health publications not receiving popular circulation. As compared with these latter publications, the content analysis indicated that the newspapers portrayed mental illness and the mentally ill in a manner which could be described as essentially pejorative, thus seeming to support frequent observations and complaints from the mental health establishment about inadequate or unfair coverage of mental illness in the popular print media. At the same time, the newspaper medium appeared to present more favourable images of nontraditional (example: community-based) mental health practices, than of traditional (example: hospital-based) practices. Implications of such results for the attitudes and beliefs of the general public vis-à-vis mental illness are offered, with special reference to the influence of the print media.

Portrayals of Mental Illness in Daytime Television Serials

Portrayals of Mental Illness in Daytime Television Serials