“Coverage of mental health in the Media”

The media have long had a poor record on mental health coverage, but a damning new report today from the Institute of Psychiatry is likely to cement its reputation for unbalanced and sensational coverage, particularly when it comes to violence. It concludes that the risk of violence posed to the public by people with mental ill-health is “grossly” exaggerated across news and drama, and that this contributes to a general and unfounded perception that mental illness – especially serious conditions such as schizophrenia – are likely to cause threatening behaviour. Positive depictions of mental illness are too rare to dent such overwhelmingly negative coverage.

The report pulls together for the first time 45 years of international research on media coverage, as well as canvassing the views of journalists on news values, story selection and editing.

According to the report, around 50% of representations of people with mental illness across print and electronic media are “associated with danger and crime”. It also found that “heavy” consumers of media appeared more likely to associate violence with mental illness.

In print, headlines that include words like “psycho” on articles about murders committed by people with a mental illness, and broadcast techniques such as overly dramatic narration, serve to drum home the same negative messages, says the report. “This demonstrates how the media selects and interprets some events and not others, thus leading to increased representations of dangerousness.”

According to the report’s authors, the challenge is to understand why undue prominence continues to be given to stories where someone with a mental illness commits murder, even though these account for a small proportion of homicides. A new set of guidelines, to which the Society of Editors and National Union of Journalists have contributed, are scheduled to be published in a booklet later this year by Shift, the Department of Health-funded campaign to tackle stigma and discrimination. link

The Guardian 27 November 2007