Mass Media
Media is a powerful source that affects the general public beliefs and assumptions. In fact mass media is one of the most significant influences in developed societies and a source that many people get their information about mental illness from. Visual images have also been shown to outweigh factual information. In terms of mental illness, media unfortunately tends to skew reality with inaccurate information. It is not uncommon that media has very damaging and stereotypical depictions of mental illness. In particular, media emphasizes the bizarre symptoms of mentally ill, such as showing a person as starring, with his mouth widely open, mumbling incoherent phrases or laughing uncontrollably. Another common depiction is the mentally ill individual as a violent killer, despite the fact that research shows that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence. Individuals with mental illness are commonly portrayed as ignorant, dangerous, unemployed, dirty, unkind and unpredictable. In addition, media usually does not distinguish between different mental disorders and serves to brand the entire population of individuals with mental disorders in a stereotypical way. For more information on specific movie stereotypes, please take a look at Screening Madness - A century of negative movie stereotypes of mental illness report. See references: Wahl, O. (1995), Corrigan, P.W. (Ed.). (2005), Hinshaw, S.P. (2007). |