Extra, extra: What exactly do we read in newspapers about mental health?

A photo of some newspapers by http://www.flickr.com/photos/shironekoeuro/People with mental health difficulties have long held the opinion that newspapers fail us on a number of levels by playing up the sensational aspects of mental health difficulty and reinforcing negative ideas about mental health difficulties and what it means to experience them.   Now there is new research to see if we’re right.

On Tuesday night, in a free public lecture at Gresham College in London former Guardian journalist Mary O’Hara launched the findings of her year long research into the ways that UK and US newspapers report mental health.  As Alistair Cooke Fulbright scholar, Mary spent a year based in the US, working with a small team of researchers to answer the question of what UK and US newspaers actually say about mental health.

I’ve been looking forward to the publication of Mary’s research because, believe it or not, it’s one of the first times than anyone has done this kind of research into the way mental health is discussed in newspapers.  The findings of the study are surprising, and I think this might be the first chance the internet has had to have a peek at them.

What was the research?

The research set out to evaluate the coverage of mental health difficulty in a range of mainstream newspapers over a significant timeframe in the US and the UK and to chart trends in that coverage.  It also looked at whether there was a difference between the headlines of stories and the actual story presented.

They looked at stories from the years 1985, 1995 and 2009 to see if there was any change over time  The study looked at the The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and the LA Times in the US and The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mail, The London Evening Standard and The Sun in UK.

They identified stories concerned with mental health difficulty, looked at what condition (if any) they discussed and divided their subject matter into topics.  They used a four point scale to grade each story positive, neutral, negative or sensationalist.  The researchers also looked at the messages that were communicated by stories and their headlines.

What did they find?

In general the researchers found that news coverage was more likely to be negative in tone than features.  In the UK, news accounted for 54% of overall coverage but 60% of negative coverage.  In the US, news accounted for 47% of coverage but 57% of negative coverage.  It seems, therefore, that there is something in news values in both the UK and US that make mental health more likely to be covered negatively.

They found that pejorative language, words like ‘crazed’, ‘maniac’ or ‘monster’, were evident in all years studied and in both countries, but that US newspapers were much less likely to use such language than their UK counterparts.

They also that specific conditions were much less likely to be mentioned in headlines than general references like ‘mental illness’ or ‘mentally ill’ and that this was true in all of the periods they studied.

Where mental health was mentioned in headlines in the UK, the four most likely topics to be discussed were suicide, mental health services, lifestyle and wellbeing and murder by a person with a mental health condition.  The research found that in the UK, while there was no evidence that there were more negative headlines than articles, there were more sensational headlines than sensational stories.

While headlines in the UK usually reflected the contents of the stories that they announced, there were instances where the headline was more sensational than the story it preceded, suggesting that newspapers still see mental health difficulty as an eye-catching bit of spice to make a story more interesting.

The picture in the US was broadly similar.  In both, suicide was the most headlined topic, but US headlines tended to be more negative in their overall messages about mental health.

Where there were secondary topics discussed in relation to mental health in headlines, they found that for the UK newspapers the five most common were gender, first-person accounts, criminal justice, inquests and children or teens.  In the US, in contrast, the five most mentioned secondary headline topics were inquests, children or teens, the mental health profession, gender and the armed forces.

When looking at article topics, they found that in the UK the four most common topics were mental health services, suicide, lifestyle and wellbeing and murder by a person with a mental illness.  Where there was a secondary topic discussed it was most likely to be gender, with other common topics being public policy or legislation, wider healthcare system, symptoms or celebrities or public figures.

In the US, articles were most likely to discuss mental health services, suicide, prevalence and causes of conditions and murder by a person with a mental health condition.  Where there was a secondary topic it was again most likely to be gender, followed by children or teens or inquests.

The research found that the psychiatric profession and therapists and therapies featured much more in US coverage, along with a higher number of stories about people overcoming adversity.  Mentions of discrimination featured rarely in headlines or articles on either side of the Atlantic.

According to their findings, race and ethnicity in relation to mental health was rarely mentioned in either UK or US coverage.

UK articles and headlines were much more likely to mention celebrities and public figures in relation to mental health and that the number of mentions jumped significantly in 2009.

The pharmaceutical industry barely registered in either headlines or articles in either country.

Where conditions were mentioned specifically, they found that depressive conditions, including bipolar depression, were the most commonly mentioned in both countries but that thee was no evidence that they were covered more now than 25 years ago.  Schizophrenia was the second most mentioned condition but was rarely referred to specifically in headlines.

Suicide was an area of intense newspaper interest with the level of coverage of suicide was extremely high in both the UK and the US, with broadsheet and tabloid newspapers equally interested in covering it.

Disturbingly, they also found that out of a total of 166 US newspaper articles, only 7 included a mention of a helpline or other mechanism for seeking help.  In the UK, only 8 out of 155 articles provided signposting to a source of help, and all of these were in published in 2009

Most shockingly for the UK, they found that in terms of tone, negative coverage of mental health had actually risen between 1995 and 2009, with an actual reduction in the percentage of overall coverage that could be coded as neutral or positive.  As shockingly, this was at a time where UK broadsheet coverage of mental health actually improved, out performing US broadsheets in the same period, indicating a rise in negative coverage from UK tabloids.

So what does it mean?

The implications of this research are interesting.  2009 was the first full year of operation for the national anti-stigma campaign Time to Change and was also the year where the BBC’s  Headroom initiative succeeded in making mental health related stories part of a number of major BBC television programmes.  Both of these initiatives have been successful in raising the amount of coverage of mental health related issues in the media.  The findings of the study suggest that while this has been effective in the UK, it hasn’t necessarily decreased the negative coverage of mental health at a time when overall coverage was rising.  It’s possible to see the ‘Time to Change effect’ in the prevalence of stories that mention celebrities in the UK, as time to change has raised awareness of the mental health difficulties of a number celebrities such as Frank Bruno or Stephen Fry.

It’s also interesting to see just what angles journalists have to take to try to interest their editors in covering mental health stories.

What we see is that editors is the UK think we the public are most likely to want to read about mental health if it includes suicide, services, lifestyle and wellbeing or murder, especially if they can get an angle like the difference between men and women, first-person accounts, crime, inquests into things that have gone wrong or kids and teens.

When it comes to the actual stories, we see that UK newspapers are most likely to tell us about services, suicide, lifestyle and wellbeing or murder, again with a gender twist.  It seems that the possible angle of stories in the UK might be wider, with articles that discuss policy or legislation, the NHS, symptom spotting or celebrities stories.

All of this is in a context where news stories in the UK papers examined account for 60% of negative coverage and where headlines at least tend to avoid specific mention of particular conditions.

I’m sure that the final research published in the spring the will compare and contrast UK broadsheets and UK tabloids for their coverage.  It will be interesting to see which newspapers scored which way when the stories were being categorised and whether the overall picture would look different if you took out either The Daily Mail or The Guardian.

Notable is the lack of coverage of discrimination, which could be understood ‘good bad news’, in that it is news that brings to light things that might make change happen.  This suggests that there is little coverage that sees people with mental health difficulties as in charge of their own destiny and able to make changes in their lives.  Though, as a small ray of sunshine, it’s possible to take heart from the UK prevalence of first person narratives and, maybe, learn from the US newspapers prevalence of stories based on people overcoming adversity.

Overall, the study sets me wondering:  Is it possible that as people with mental health difficulties have become more visible and collectively more open about the reality of our experiences that in response newspapers have paid more attention to us?

If it is, then it seems that editors have been unable to shake off older ideas about what makes mental health news.  Are editors out of step with the public, or when it comes to mental health coverage, does the public get what the public wants?

Mark Brown is editor of One in Four magazine

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One Response to Extra, extra: What exactly do we read in newspapers about mental health?

  1. hi,i feel alot of the negative is from the services its self,my daughter has been ill since 2009,the service we have received has been poor and none discript,we have been trying to get her referred to a rehabilitation centre with no joy because of service breakdown,there is no community care for people with mental health or help for families,we would like help before my daughter kills her self through drink or has been raped and murdered or made homeless,but no one wants to listen,there is no help for these people who are very poorly,no wonder there is an high level of suicide and homelessness,life does not matter only when the person is dead do we parents get listened to and get answers…………Hull and Eastriding……

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