Why Do So Many People Think This Way?
The media has a lot to answer for. We are influenced by the information available to us and this makes up our belief system. When those beliefs are continually reinforced they set like cement and it takes time to break them down. We could refer to the media metaphorically as "the cement mixer," which has stirred the misinformation and spread it around, breeding stigma and discrimination.
Jeffrey Swanson, a medical sociologist and professor of psychiatry at Duke University made it his life pursuit to investigate the connection between mental illness and violence because he recognized the public perception but couldn’t find good data evidence to support the connection. He said:
“As recently as 2013, almost 46% of respondents to a national survey said that people with mental illness were more dangerous than other people.”
Wow, that’s almost half of the population thinking people like myself are dangerous, even though the facts say different!
TV and Films
I watched a thriller film about a year ago on a group of teenagers who went on a trip to what appeared to be a haunted house. People started to disappear and it became a guessing game as to who was the dangerous culprit.
Guess what — the guy luring the others away with the intent to murder had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Everyone was petrified of him and the film ended in a chase and stabbing frenzy. Why on earth it was necessary to link the murderer’s crime to a diagnosis of schizophrenia?
Newspaper Headlines
Paranoid schizophrenia is a diagnosis that battles with labelling stigma. This headline was taken from the Daily Mail newspaper back in 2011: “Schizophrenic stabbed little brother, nine, to death hours after health workers said he was no threat.”
Schizophrenic! I guess that defines him then. (Sorry, my sarcasm expresses my annoyance.) Would we start this headline with “diabetic," “cancer sufferer,” or, “amputee?" No, I don’t think so.
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is considered necessary to sell films, TV dramas, newspapers and magazines, but how many holes could we pick at them? Looking at the headline just mentioned we know little about circumstances. Was there a trigger? If health workers said he was no threat, can the crime be directly linked to his diagnosis? If he was in crisis, what about the role of his health worker and his compliance with treatment? Were alcohol or substances involved?
We may be given more facts in the article but the headline's connection between mental illness and violence is misleading. Most reporters have limited mental health knowledge in terms of understanding the impact of negative reporting and stigmatizing language. They are not specialists and their damage can be colossal. There are guidelines to adhere to where mental health specialists should be consulted, but in my opinion these are not enforced nearly enough.
