Mental Health in the Media

Broadcasters - and the media in general - seem to have a fascination with the subject of mental illness. From Ally McBeal to Days of Our Lives, from Star Trek to 60 Minutes, characters with mental health issues pop up regularly. Maybe it's not a surprise that one of the English speaking world's most popular comedy series - Frasier - is about a dysfunctional psychiatrist.

But real-life professionals working in Mental Health are not happy with the media's portrayal of mental illness.

Stereotyping Mental Illness

Tessa Thompson is the Anti-Discrimination Team Leaders from New Zealand's Mental Health Commission. ( http://www.mhc.govt.nz/ ) She's been working for two years on a media-watch project, carrying out a detailed, sophisticated scan of news media and its portrayal of mental health issues.

Tessa says the news media, on the whole, like the topic of mental health. A lot of stories are generated which have a mental health angle, even though it's a relatively minor (or even practically non-existent) part of the whole story. She says a lot of the coverage is about administration issues which wouldn't be covered, were it not for the fact that it's connected with Mental Health.

She told Suite101 that the extensive coverage is due to the underlying stereotyping of people with mental illness, and the mistaken belief that people with mental illness may be a danger to the community.

She says the fact is that twenty percent of the population in any one year will experience some kind of mental health problem. However, the media's concentration on an assumed link between mental illness and violent crime can make life very difficult for them.

Tessa says that when she started her study, many mental health professionals told her that the media discriminated against people with mental illness.

Now she's nearly completed her work, she says it's more complicated; and has more to do with balance.

She says stories are given a spin, or 'beaten up' to bring a psychiatric angle to the fore. For instance, a factual report of a court case after a violent crime might lead with the fact that a person was sent for psychiatric assessment - even though that's standard procedure, and no more unusual than a lunch break.

However, as far as editors and journalists - and presumably readers - are concerned, it makes the story 'sexier'.

Tessa's not carried out as thorough a scan of entertainment media - but anecdotally, she says the same mistakes are made. Mental illness is stereotyped or charicatured. She singles out the movie Wag the Dog, which features a mentally ill character whose grip on sanity is maintained only by constant medication. "He's only there for comic relief" she says. You can see her point - if the movie had picked on some OTHER medical condition - say cancer, or blindness - for ridicule, it would have been pilloried, and rightly so.

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