Psychosis and Violence: the media's influence
A guest blog from Lucy Daszkiewicz
Nicola Edgington jailed for
37 years for killing grandmother in street knife attack - Judge brands
schizophrenic Nicola Edgington a 'calculated' killer (London Evening Standard, 4th March, 2013)
Two sisters whose mother was
beheaded by a man with paranoid schizophrenia in a supermarket on Tenerife have
met his family in north Wales. (BBC, May 13 2013)
A man who
set fire to three men, two in a pub garden, has been detained under the Mental
Health Act. (BBC, 15
April, 2013)
Mum ... admitted her four-year-old
daughter’s manslaughter at their Moss Side flat last year after being diagnosed
with schizophrenia. (Manchester
Evening News, 28th February, 2013)
All these headlines appeared in the top 5 articles relating to
schizophrenia. The sad thing in my opinion is that schizophrenia is a serious
condition that affects around 1% of the population (Lieberman, Stroup &
Perkins, 2012). It is characterized by symptoms such as hallucinations,
delusions, and struggle with building social relationships leading to them
becoming socially isolated (Carr & McNulty, 2006). In addition to this
people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are approximately 13 times more
likely to die by suicide, with the greatest risk being after the recovery from
the first psychotic episode (Lieberman et al, 2012).
Gonza´lez-Torres et
al. (2007) found that people who have schizophrenia face the stigma of being
labelled dangerous in many aspects of their lives and may use social isolation
as a way to defend themselves from this. Hocking (2003) identified that as a
result of stigma people with schizophrenia may struggle with employment and
housing, and a key influence on peoples perception is the media's portrayal. Unfortunately the reporting of schizophrenia is often misleading within the
media and can be used in a metaphorical sense leading people to confuse the
condition with other disorders such as multiple personality disorder (Clement
& Foster, 2008).
.jpg)
In fact, research has pointed out that 95% of murders are committed by people without
psychiatric problems, and in reality, people who have psychosis are more likely
to hurt themselves than other people (Ferriman, 2000). In addition
there is only a small increase in likelihood that people who are diagnosed with
schizophrenia will commit a violent crime compared to the rest of the population
(Fazel et al., 2009). The variable that appears to make the most difference is
whether the individual has a substance abuse problem (Fazel et al., 2009). Duckworth et al., (2003) suggest that what we need is to educate through the
means of media instead of demonising and misleading people, and that maybe by
using terms such as schizophrenia correctly we can make it more socially
acceptable so that people do not feel stigmatised and reluctant to seek help.
References
BBC News (2013). Leicester arsonist set fire to men in pub garden
(published 15th April 2013). retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-22153117
BBC News (2013). Tenerife
murder victim's daughters meet killer's family (published 13th May 2013).
Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22504026
Clement, S., & Foster, N. (2008). Newspaper reporting on
schizophrenia: a content analysis of five national newspapers at two time
points. Schizophrenia research, 98(1), 178-183.
Duckworth, K., Halpern, J. H., Schutt, R. K., & Gillespie, C. (2003). Use
of schizophrenia as a metaphor in US newspapers. Psychiatric Services, 54(10),
1402-1404.
Fazel, S., Långström, N., Hjern, A., Grann, M., & Lichtenstein,
P. (2009). Schizophrenia, substance abuse, and violent crime. JAMA: the
journal of the American Medical Association, 301(19),
2016-2023. Ferriman, A. (2000). Press: The stigma of schizophrenia. BMJ:
British Medical Journal, 320(7233), 522.
González-Torres, M. A.,
Oraa, R., Arístegui, M., Fernández-Rivas, A., & Guimon, J. (2007). Stigma
and discrimination towards people with schizophrenia and their family
members. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 42(1),
14-23. Hocking, B. (2003). Reducing mental illness stigma and
discrimination-everybody's business. Medical Journal of Australia , 178(9),
S47.
we can not refuse the importance of social media because we are using twitter and Facebook for sharing our services for those students who are waiting for our online writing help phd dissertation writing service
ReplyDeleteDrawing is actually an art which is already built-in a person. You cannot forcefully add these skills in hands Read more and brain of anyone. Because, these are god gifted skills and one need to utilize them for sake of getting success in that profession.
ReplyDeleteI agree to this. Media’s played an impact on mental health. I can understand how it acts as a hypodermic needle. It’s all to collect that green. Being a finance student, going through every phase of the aspect, gaining the best finance dissertation help from elite experts prepared long structured task joints for me to excel my university level. It’s easy to understand, that negative marketing results to more traffic.
ReplyDeleteI had to do an assignment on the change of suicide rates over the years and compare them between each other and analyze the main reason of the increasing rate on psychotic disorders which are leading to rash behaviour like suicidesn and murders.For instance, one of the biggest reason of the suicides in Utah is that the Mormons are not being accepted if they are not conformists to the culture. These are the reasons and statistics which I needed to dig for, but lacking the time, also the risk of putting the wrong data is the reason I took the help of Psychology Assignment Writing Service because this kind of work is their professional forte
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thread. I liked this so much as I have found this for my blog very useful. Well, for now I was reading about the top crimes in UK and I found DBS check online where you can check crime records of anyone and you can get your DBS certificate only in 2 to 7 days.
ReplyDelete