The Media & Mental Illness ( I said I would post it and I did)
The Media & Mental Illness This paper intends to address the relationship between the media and its inaccurate projections of the mentally ill. This critique will attempt to address how the media reports and sells crime, most notably the prejudice behind articles and news broadcasts that were written to demonize and induce panic about mentally ill offenders. I first entertained this research topic while watching a short news segment that was covering the Colorado Dark Knight Rises Shooting that took place on July 20th 2012. All the prominent news stations were covering the mass shooting and I remember that one very crude news anchor left a sour taste in my mouth when he asked a psychologist something along the lines of 'So what's the psychobabble on James Holmes?' and continued to paint Holmes and perhaps unintentionally the population of mentally ill people as the most violent and disturbed criminals. It was then that I came to the conclusion that people who suffer from mental illness are stigmatized by messages that are continuously promoted by the media.
For starters, to claim that the media simply reports crime in an objective or even empirical fashion is incorrect. What mass media does report however is sensationalized crime stories, slanted stories that help to shape the public's perception of crime (Quinney, 1970). If mass media were to report crime as it actually is; with facts and neutrality and limited repetition then the media would not be providing their subscribers with entertainment, and boring the audience defies what the media's corporate purpose entails. It can then be argued that this concept of crime the general public holds is constructed, and to make a consistent profit these complex concepts of crime rates and offender criminality are distorted, exaggerated and oversimplified with quick statistics. Chris McCormick further points out that since the general public relies on the media for their knowledge about crime, the media can lead these people to believe that crime is out of control which can reinforce their out of proportion fear of being victimized (McCormick, 2010). This factual distortion is most definitely apparent when individual cases of mentally ill offenders are sensationalized by the media.
When a person commits a crime and the details of the crime are later circulated throughout mass media, immediately the mental health along with the motive of the offender are the most interesting discussions of news anchors for the days to follow, especially in cases of major tragedies such as mass shootings. Mass shooting are considered frightening and unfathomable to the general public and though they comprise only a tiny fraction of all homicides; they are the homicide cases that undoubtedly take up the most media attention (Roth, 2013). Cases of mass shootings such as Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold of Columbine High School, Cho Seunge-Hui of Virginia Tech, Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook Elementary School, James Holmes of the Dark Knight Rises Screening and Marc Lépine of École Polytehnique have garnered the most media attention because these devastating actions force people to ask themselves why it happened. People feel an intrinsic need to know why something bad happened so they can rationalize ways to prevent a similar incident from happening again. In cases like the ones mentioned above, the media claims that the why or reason for the mass shootings is mental illness of the mass shooters. This is not to say that all mass shooters are mentally ill, but that the media tends to report and recycle the stories that paint them as such. For example there was list published on the internet regarding the 16 mass shootings that took place in the United States during 2012 and out of the whole list, I only recall two of the mass shooters garnering much attention with the media; Adam Lanza and James Holmes (Zornick, 2012). What separated these two mass shooters from the other 14 in the public's eyes, was that their heinous actions could possibly be explained by mental illness and specifically Schizophrenia.
This is an injustice in my eyes, because if the media only highlights crimes where there is a possible incidence of mental illness involved in the impairment of the individual, it is skewing the public's perception of who commits violent crimes. In actuality murder is unpredictable and can happen to anyone regardless of whether the person may suffer from a mental illness. John Csernansky actually infers that most murders are committed by people who are perfectly normal from a mental point of view, but the actions of the mentally ill are sensationalized by the media because while a mentally healthy person's actions can be rationally explained, the actions of a mentally ill person who is suffering from delusions cannot (Roth, 2012). This assertion runs parallel to many of the articles I read including ones that demonstrated statistical data, regarding violence and the mentally ill. The most commonly held belief about people with mental illness is that though they are three to five times more likely than the general public to be violent in certain situations, they are also two and half times more likely to be victims of a crime than the general public (Ragin, 2012 & Heinrichs, 2012). The biggest flaw with this misconception that gets perpetuated by the media, is the fact that mental illness is supposed to be considered the only causative factor and only answer to explain an offender's behaviour. It is true that Schizophrenia is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and cognitive deterioration, but it is also true that only in rare cases does a patient suffering from Schizophrenia have a violent outburst (Roth, 2013). An alternative way to understand this argument, is that people with Schizophrenia may have delusions impairing their judgment but other factors such as their social support system, their reactions and severity of their issue along with the structural system of society like people without mental health issues also govern their behaviour. After extensive overlapping research, the conclusions from many of the articles I read estimated that excluding people with substance abuse problems, only 7 percent of those with a serious mental illness including schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disease; committed minor and extreme acts of violence (Roth, 2013).
The media including the people and instruments involved in transmitting the content, are responsible for increasing the stigma of mental illness through their negatively focused representations (Corrigan, Powells & Michaels, 2013). The reinforcement of inaccurate information is a pet peeve of mine but when misinformation causes unfounded stigmas that directly affects the well being of others in such a dramatic way really bothers me. Corrigan, Powells & Michaels conducted a study in which they examined the influence of two kinds of newspaper stories for their impact on stigma; stories that decrease stigma and stories that increase stigma usually unintentionally. In their study of 3300 stories they found that only 4% of stories had themes of recovery and acceptance and with those stories they found that the majority of participants had very little understanding or support for those with mental illness. This came out through the test scores where the two most startling discoveries were that the majority thought the mentally ill should be forced into treatment and should be blamed for developing their mental illnesses. This is proof that the way the media stigmatizes the people with mental illness is subtle but highly effective.
After researching the relationship between mass media and mental illness, the one thing I truly want to see change is the way people report mental illness whether it is with more empowering and encouraging messages or reporting crime with more balance and less recycling. With the way the media perpetuates stigma, it is anything but a positive message for those suffering with mental illness. When it reports about mentally ill offenders, it either gives attention-seeking individuals a reason to repeat their actions from the fame or it scares insecure or confused individuals away from admitting they have and problem and that they need to seek treatment. It impacts people who suffer from mental illness because it also interferes with their opportunities and relationships with other people, for example when trying to obtain a job or place to live or even forming a simple friendship. It is important that these issues be addressed in order to better society, because nothing is more harmful to a person than inaccurate misconceptions about the reality they live in.
BibliographyABC News. (2013). James Holmes court appearance: Aurora, Colo. alleged gunman in 'dark knight rises' shootings dazed [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKB0Oene5Ys&feature=player_embedded
Corrigan, P.W., Powell, K.J. & Michaels, P.J.. (2013). The effects of news stories on the stigma of mental illness. Journal of nervous and mental disease. 201, 179-182. doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e3182848c24
Heinrichs, R. & Sam, E.. (2012). Schizophrenia and crime: How predictable are charges, convictions and violence? International journal of mental health and addiction.10, 122-131. doi:10.1007/s11469-010-9308-z
Howard, R., Khalifa, N., Duggan, C. & Lumsden, J.. (2012). Are patients deemed ‘dangerous and severely personality disordered’ different from other personality disordered patients detained in forensic settings? Criminal behaviour and mental health. 22, 65-78. doi:10.1002/cbm.827
McCormick, C.. (2010).Crime rates and crime fear; portraying crime as out of control. Constructing danger: Emotions and the mis/representation of crime in the news (2nd ed.). (pp. 144-164). Halifax, NS, Canada: Fernwood Publishing.
Quinney, R. (1970). The social reality of crime. Boston, US: Little Brown.
Ragins, M. (2012, July 29). Mental illness or not, there will always be violence; Mentally ill are victims more often than perpetrators of crime.
Sunday Post [Regina, SK]. p D. 8.
Roth, M. (2013, January 29). Mysteries of the Mind: Violence by mentally ill is rare, but more frequent than in others. McClatchy - Tribune Business News [Washington].
Zornick, G. (2012, December 14). Sixteen US mass shootings happened in 2012, leaving at least 88 dead. The Nation. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us- mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead