scholarly journals 4. “Hit by Life”: Individualisation as (de)stigmatisation in Media Representations of Mental Illness

Media Health ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Marie Roslyng
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Media Representations

Carceral violence at the intersection of madness and crime in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-285
Author(s):  
Christina Fawcett ◽  
Steven Kohm
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Video Games ◽  
General Population ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
The State ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
High Security

The action-adventure video games Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Batman: Arkham City (2011) draw on familiar comic book narratives, themes and characters to situate players in a world of participatory violence, crime and madness. In the first game, the player-as-Batman is situated in Arkham Asylum, a high-security facility for the criminally insane and supervillains that also temporarily houses a general population of prisoners from Blackgate Penitentiary. The elision of criminality and mental illness becomes amplified in the second game with the establishment of Arkham City, a combined facility that conflates asylum and prison, completely dissolving any distinction between crime and madness. We draw on Rafter’s conceptual framework of popular criminology to seriously interrogate the representation of violence, crime and madness in these games. More than simply texts offering popular explanations for crime, the games directly implicate the player in violence enacted upon the bodies of criminals and patients alike. Violence is necessary to move the action of the game forward and evokes a range of emotional responses from players who draw from personal experience and other cultural and media representations as they navigate the game. We argue that while the game celebrates violence and the brutal conditions of incarceration, it also offers possibilities for subversive and critical readings. While working to affirm assumptions about crime and mental illness, the game also provides a visceral and visual critique of excessive punishment by the state as a source of injustice for those deemed mad or bad.

scholarly journals Stigma: ignorance, prejudice or discrimination?

2007 ◽  
Vol 190 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Thornicroft ◽  
Diana Rose ◽  
Aliya Kassam ◽  
Norman Sartorius
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Intervention Studies ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Direct Participation ◽  
People With Mental Illness ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Attitude Surveys

SummaryThe term stigma refers to problems of knowledge (ignorance), attitudes (prejudice) and behaviour (discrimination). Most research in this area has been based on attitude surveys, media representations of mental illness and violence, has only focused upon schizophrenia, has excluded direct participation by service users, and has included few intervention studies. However, there is evidence that interventions to improve public knowledge about mental illness can be effective. The main challenge in future is to identify which interventions will produce behaviour change to reduce discrimination against people with mental illness.

scholarly journals Changing media representations of mental health

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Philo
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Public Beliefs ◽  
Major Study ◽  
Group Interviews

The Glasgow Media Group has published the first major study in this country on media coverage of mental health (Philo, 1996). This research examines both the content of press, television and films and how these relate to public beliefs about mental illness. It involved an extensive content analysis plus a series of focus group interviews. The results show clearly that ill-informed beliefs on, for example, the association of schizophrenia with violence can be traced directly to media accounts.

scholarly journals Media Representations of Bipolar Disorder Through the Case of Suzy Favor Hamilton

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-139
Author(s):  
Rachel Vaccaro ◽  
Ted M. Butryn
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Elite Athletes ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Sports Culture ◽  
The Media ◽  
Open Discussion

Individuals suffering from mental illness face challenges that are related to stigma and lack of education that are often reinforced by the media. Specifically, the elite athletic culture is not conducive for athletes who suffer from mental illness because there is at times a belief that mental illnesses are less prevalent in elite sport. Even though incidence of mental illness in elite athletes has gained more prominence in the popular media, there is still a lack of research in this area. Specifically, there is limited research regarding media representations of athletes who suffer from mental illness. To address this gap in the literature, an ethnographic content analysis (ECA) was done to examine Suzy Favor Hamilton’s open discussion of bipolar disorder surrounding the release of her new memoir, Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running From Madness. ECA yielded one overarching theme with three supporting sub-themes. Results indicated that even though Favor Hamilton’s book worked to spread awareness, the media attention surrounding the book release represented omission of mental illness in the environment of athletics. Overall, sports culture provides an environment that is not often willing to accept that mental illnesses exist in athletes.

scholarly journals Fall and rise of the movie ‘psycho-killer’

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 174-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Severe Mental Illness ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Negative Images ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Media Group

The Glasgow Media Group, through a combination of media watching and group interviews, has confirmed the importance of media representations of mental illness, with its finding that negative images can outweigh even an individual's direct experiences in this area (Philo, 1996). In one recent summary, Philo concludes: “the results show clearly that ill-informed beliefs on, for example, the association of schizophrenia with violence can be traced directly to media accounts” (Philo, 1997). The origins and strength of this association can be traced to cinema, where powerful images of violent ‘insanity’ endure today. In a questionnaire of 487 people who had a family member with severe mental illness, 85.6% identified “popular movies about mentally ill killers” as the largest single contributor to the stigma of that illness (Wahl & Harman, 1989).

Fool’s Gold: Psychologists Using Disingenuous Reasoning to Mislead Legislatures into Granting Psychologists Prescriptive Authority

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-524
Author(s):  
Brent Pollitt
Keyword(s):  
Primary Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Nurse Practitioners ◽  
Primary Care Physicians ◽  
American Psychological Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychotropic Medications ◽  
American Psychological ◽  
Training Requirements ◽  
Prescriptive Authority

Mental illness is a serious problem in the United States. Based on “current epidemiological estimates, at least one in five people has a diagnosable mental disorder during the course of a year.” Fortunately, many of these disorders respond positively to psychotropic medications. While psychiatrists write some of the prescriptions for psychotropic medications, primary care physicians write more of them. State legislatures, seeking to expand patient access to pharmacological treatment, granted physician assistants and nurse practitioners prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications. Over the past decade other groups have gained some form of prescriptive authority. Currently, psychologists comprise the primary group seeking prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications.The American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy (“ASAP”), a division of the American Psychological Association (“APA”), spearheads the drive for psychologists to gain prescriptive authority. The American Psychological Association offers five main reasons why legislatures should grant psychologists this privilege: 1) psychologists’ education and clinical training better qualify them to diagnose and treat mental illness in comparison with primary care physicians; 2) the Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (“PDP”) demonstrated non-physician psychologists can prescribe psychotropic medications safely; 3) the recommended post-doctoral training requirements adequately prepare psychologists to prescribe safely psychotropic medications; 4) this privilege will increase availability of mental healthcare services, especially in rural areas; and 5) this privilege will result in an overall reduction in medical expenses, because patients will visit only one healthcare provider instead of two–one for psychotherapy and one for medication.

A Tribute to the Late William J. Curran

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Legal Medicine ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Institute ◽  
University Professor

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.

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