Schizophrenia And Mass Media Analysis

Introduction
People diagnosed with schizophrenia face numerous daily battles with managing the symptoms of their involuntary condition in order to live a healthy fulfilling life. However public perceptions of schizophrenia have been vastly influenced by the media’s negative portrayal of mental health, with the emphasis on schizophrenia. Key messages in media have predominantly shaped the public’s understanding and attitude toward people with schizophrenia by frequently associating it with unpredictability, violence and danger.
Focusing on how newspaper article’s shape public opinion, attitudes and behaviour toward individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Health messages in the media
Studies have suggested that people obtain most health-related
Ramsay and Minozzi used several methods in an attempt to assess the effects of mass media on the utilisation of health services and concluded that with poor quality primary research and limited information there was still evidence to suggest mass media was a leading source of information about important health issues (Ramsay and Minozzi, 1996). For further reading about this study I have included the link below: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000389/pdf Mass media has played a key role in society for many years, it provides information from around the world that people would not usually have access too. Messages in the media keep people informed on things like health service provision, economics, policy changes, crime and do so in a variety of ways such as: leaflets, newspaper publications, television adverts, billboards and so forth.
Mass media draws the public’s attention to particular issues, placing more emphasis on certain topics, so they appear to be of more importance to the
If you don’t tackle it, you tar every patient with the same brush.” However, there is no clear indication on what Mr Hendry believes would be effective in tackling “the violence” and reporting in this way without any background information to put the perpetrators actions into any kind of context is not very fair as the state of mind at the time of incident is unknown, not that any explanation can justify these tragic incidents, having some knowledge of the effects Schizophrenia has on a person allows people to at least empathise.
The article points out failures in the NHS mental health services on particular cases, in hope of initiating a change in service provision to ensure people diagnosed with schizophrenia receive the proper support. Though this article punishes the majority for the actions of the few by demonising people diagnosed with mental health conditions. Schizophrenia is plagued by inaccurate descriptors from the media which forms public opinion, influences actions and leads to