The media and stigma

Picture the image of a building on fire. The building is a hospital – a psychiatric hospital. Innocent sick people are displaced as their temporary home is set ablaze. The 2002 headline covering this tragedy: "Roasted Nuts."

Stigma in the media

While watch groups such as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) condemned The Trentonian newspaper and the newspaper issued an apology after the outcry, the damage was done. Yet another headline stigmatizing and devaluing people with a mental illness was written into history. And this, at a time when the Surgeon General implored people with a mental illness to seek help, while admitting that stigma is one of the greatest barriers to treatment.

As noted by the Canadian Mental Health Association:

"The 1999 Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health identified stigma as one of today's foremost obstacles to improved mental health care, noting that 'stigma tragically deprives people of their dignity and interferes with their full participation in society.' Stigma in relation to people with mental illness is often a combination of a lack of relevant knowledge (ignorance), attitudes (prejudice) and behaviour (discrimination). Simply put, stigma refers to an attitude. The resultant discrimination is the behaviour that exemplifies that attitude."

Various media have been found to be the most influential way of shaping attitudes about mental illness.