Tireless advocacy in the last decade by mental health professionals and people who are affected by mental illness has aimed to reduce the stigma of psychiatric disorders. To determine the influence those efforts have had on news media portrayals, Emory researchers studied newspaper articles using the terms "schizophrenia" and "schizophrenic" in the years 2000 versus 2010.
"The primary goal of journalists is to give fair, accurate and unbiased reports of news events that will be of interest to the public," says study author Arshya Vahabzadeh, MD, resident psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine.
"A secondary goal is to capture the attention of readers and viewers," he says. "Unfortunately, stories linked to a mental illness have been shown to strongly attract readers' attention, and to contribute to unfavorable public conceptions of mental illness."
According to the researchers, the decade from 2000 to 2010 was of particular importance to the study because as the new millennium began, attention increasingly focused on public awareness of mental illness, with mental health professionals, advocacy groups and governmental bodies targeting de-stigmatization of psychiatric disorders.
Vahabzadeh and his colleagues examined hundreds of articles that appeared in five major newspapers during a five-month time period during 2000 and 2010, searching for the terms "schizophrenia" and "schizophrenic."
The researchers found that during that period in 2000, 7,114 articles were published in the five selected newspapers, 247 of which mentioned schizophrenia. During the same period in 2010, 4,397 articles were published, with 151 articles mentioning schizophrenia.
Although a larger percentage of the articles were published in 2000 than in 2010, the percentage of articles mentioning schizophrenia did not differ. Similarly, there was no significant difference in metaphorical usage of the term "schizophrenia" – using the term to describe conflicting decisions or illogical actions.