Mental Health Media Analysis

Mental Health has recently had a large scale of media coverage due to the stigma and taboo around this topic. Pilgrim (2005:157) suggests that stigma refers to the social consequences of negative attributions about a person based upon stereotype. In the case of people with mental health problems, it is presumed that they lack intelligibility and social competence and that they are dangerous. A lot of awareness has been spread across soap operas such as Eastenders, Coronation Street and Hollyoaks as they have all been covering storylines around Mental Health. Soap operas are popular ‘prime time’ television shows that run daily and they have been using clear storylines in order to reach out to their large audience’s to raise awareness of Mental

After having a storyline on sensitive topics they have a helpline to advertise that if people are suffering from similar situations they should get in touch to seek help. This is raising awareness of how to get help and it is a way of ending the taboo around mental health problems. By covering these storylines they are raising awareness, as there has been many articles written about how they portray mental health and how they reach out to the public. It is important to cover issues such as mental health as there is a lot of stigma against mental health leading to people being frightened to seek for help and talk about their personal mental health problems. An excellent example of this was the storyline that was covered in Coronation Street based on Steve McDonald who has been suffering from depression for a long time and was frightened to tell anyone. Time for change (2014) quoted Stuart Blackburn, producer of coronation Street who said: You hope a show like Corrie can genuinely make a difference to tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, who’ll be watching with different eyes or thinking ‘Maybe I should go to the

World mental health day first started in 1992 raising awareness since then about the effects of mental health. According to Mental Health Foundation (2015) one in four adults and one in ten children are likely to have a mental health problem in any given year. This can have a profound impact on the lives of tens of millions of people in the UK. It is estimated that only about a quarter of people with a mental health problem in the UK receive ongoing treatment. It is time to end the stigma. People who need help should not feel ashamed. This year mental health day was based around dignity of those suffering. An example of media coverage on the 10th October 2015 of mental health day is the story written on the BBC news when Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met up with young people that are experiencing mental health. They spoke to them about the stigma that is associated with mental health. ‘Mind's’ chief executive Paul Farmer said that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are helping us to send an important and urgent message to the world that it is time to change our attitudes about mental health problems (BBC News,