• What's the Story? Reporting mental health and suicide
• At a glance
• The handbook
  • Foreword
  • Introduction
    • It could be you...
    • Why else should you care?
  • Key facts about mental health
  • Care in and out of the community
  • Reporting mental health and violence
  • Violence: the other side of the story
  • Reporting suicide
  • Language and terminology
  • Industry codes of practice
  • Diagnoses
  • Contacts
• Shift Media Network

Introduction

The handbook – what is it for?

This handbook is packed with useful facts, figures and contacts. It is designed to help you do your job when covering these stories, whether you’re a print, broadcast or magazine journalist.

It is intended to help, not hinder - we do not want to stop stories like these being reported. Quite the contrary, we would like more coverage of these important public health issues. But we do also want to encourage fair, accurate and balanced reporting, as well as awareness of the repercussions of careless coverage.

So the handbook also contains tips on how best to avoid causing needless offence - or worse - to your many readers and viewers affected by mental health problems. They apply whether you are covering a murder, a suicide or in fact wherever mental health crops up in the news, which can be pretty much anywhere. Our aim is to help you cover these stories properly and, at the same time, improve public understanding and avoid adding to the problems faced by people with mental health problems.

What’s the problem? – stigma and discrimination

People with mental health problems are one of the most excluded groups in society, their lives often blighted by stigma and discrimination. They are denied access to jobs, education and healthcare and, often shunned by neighbours and colleagues, from playing a full part in our communities.

Many fear disclosing their condition, even to family and friends (Mental Health and Social Exclusion, Social Exclusion Unit Report 2004). People with mental health problems frequently say the barriers they face because of their diagnosis have an even bigger destructive impact on their lives than their symptoms. They say they can manage their symptoms, but fear, prejudice and discrimination take away the rights that others take for granted.

What’s this got to do with the media?

Over the last few decades, media coverage of issues like race, sexuality and physical disability has changed significantly, reflecting changing public opinion. Discrimination, of course, still takes place in society in relation to these issues, but the media has helped millions of people play a full part in their communities and take their rightful place in mainstream society.

But for people with mental health problems stigma and discrimination remain rife. You are in a privileged position, able to help improve public understanding and demolish some of the tired, old misconceptions about mental illness.

There have already been dramatic improvements in how much the media covers mental health issues in recent years (Mind Over Matter: Improving Media Reporting of Mental Illness, Shift 2006). Depression, anxiety, stress, eating disorders, panic attacks, post-natal depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder – all these conditions and more are now widely reported on. We read in the health and news pages about these illnesses and watch documentaries on television about them. Celebrities are increasingly willing to talk publicly about their mental health problems. Common mental illnesses have entered into the general lexicon. This is in stark comparison to ten or twenty years ago when we heard next to nothing about them.

Room for improvement

However, there is still a way to go, particularly with views about severe mental illness. Prejudiced attitudes towards those more severely affected remain deeply ingrained in our society and this is still reflected in media coverage.

At worst, headlines sometimes still carry the kind of derogatory language (for example ‘nutter’, ‘maniac’ or ‘schizo’) that would be unthinkable in relation to race or physical disability. More subtly, terminology and language can be inaccurate and mental health is often presented as a problem for society, not a major public health issue.

The linkage between violence and mental illness is exaggerated. A survey found 27% of coverage about mental health was about homicides and violent crime (Mind Over Matter: Improving Media Reporting of Mental Illness, Shift 2006). Millions of people have mental health problems – very few are violent. Only five out of a total of 600 homicides a year are random attacks on members of the public by someone with a mental health problem (National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, 2006).

By challenging these stereotypes, rather than reinforcing them, you can encourage more openness about mental illness. This will really improve the lives of all those affected and will encourage others to come forward to get the treatment they so desperately need.

What's the Story: Reporting mental health and suicide: A resource for journalists and editors