Links to other pages on MentalHealthStigma: Stigma Survey Psycho Tropic Ads Subverting the Law Along Came a "Spider" PsychoMedia Movie Gallery How to Spot a "Mental Patient" One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest Fast For Freedom in Mental Health ******************************************************* PsychoMedia: Alive and Well in America "Where Movies Create Headlines" the voice of reason: excerpt from Violence and Mental Illness In order to fully understand the media's potential for influencing public opinion about mental health recipients, it is necessary to recognize the persistent negative stereotypes in which people labeled "mentally-ill" are frequently portrayed. Negative images of mental health recipients are so common in movies and on television that the public's perception of mental illness is one of fear and paranoia, bordering on mass hysteria. "We continue to be appalled, saddened and disgusted by our results," laments George Gerbner, Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University and author of the Cultural Indicators Project Report. Founded 25 years ago to measure television's diversity and cultural impact on television viewers, the latest study (1997) suggests, among other things, that the image of people labelled mentally-ill as "psychotic" and "evil people" has become deeply embedded in our popular culture. The study was based on an analysis of 6,882 speaking parts appearing in hundreds of televison shows over a three season period. While there are certainly acts of violence committed by people who are labeled "mentally-ill", the percentage is so minuscule compared to acts of violence committed overall in American society, that the knee-jerk reaction which resulted in Kendra's Law stigmatizing the whole mental health community is highly questionable. According to Special Agent George D. DeShazor Jr. of the FBI's Behavorial Science Unit "the majority of crimes in America are committed by people with all levels of functioning and personality types... only a small portion (slide shown states 3%) of violence in American society can be attributed to mental illness." Says Mr. DeShazor: "Despite the infrequency in display of violence with the mentally-ill, mental disorder and violence are closely linked in the public mind." (Violence and Mental Illness: audio clip above). And ironically, according to Phil Donahue's national best-seller The Human Animal, "3% of all murders committed in the United States are committed by parents who murder their own children", and yet I know of no law which forces parents to take medications or to receive "treatment." Is this because most people would realize how ludicrous it would be to scapegoat 97% of parents because of the behavior of the other 3%? And according to a 1993 University of California study on the prevalence of behavioral disorders in the United States in the mid-1980's, being laid off from a job was a much more significant factor in determining the risk of potentially violent behavior than having a history of "mental illness." So the actual facts diametrically oppose the media propaganda and the ironic truth is that the overwhelming majority of people labeled "mentally-ill" are not violent! Just like the overwhelming majority of postal employees are not violent and have never executed their co-workers. Just like the overwhelming majority of high school students are not violent and have never slaughtered their classmates. Just like the overwhelming majority of police officers are not violent and have never engaged in acts of police brutality. The sad irony is that according to the BBC News and ABC News.com mental health recipients are more often the victims of violent crimes rather than the perpetrators of violent crimes. What then generated the media frenzy which created the atmosphere for Kendra's Law? Is this the dawn of that Brave New World wherein truth is an idle distraction and where the media doesn't actually report the news... but in fact creates the news? William F. Baker, the president of WNET New York/Channel 13 points out in the March 13th, 2002 edition of Newsday that: "As commercial news programs try to retain audiences that have hundreds of channels to choose from, journalistic quality has plummeted, and news editors increasingly are resorting to sensation, scandal and oversimplification to keep ratings up and ad dollars flowing." (Eye on the Media). To quote the words of one of history's most famous statesmen, Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill: "Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few!" ***************************************************** MentalHealthStigma.com: How to Spot a "Mental Patient!" ***************************************************** "A recent report found that if television news coverage accurately reflected real environmental risks to health, then there would be roughly twenty-six minutes of coverage about deaths related to cigarette smoking, for every one second of coverage about deaths related to airplane crashes. Ironically, the exact opposite is true! For every one second of coverage devoted to deaths caused by cigarette smoking, twenty-six minutes of coverage is devoted to deaths caused by airplane crashes. In spite of the fact that way more people die every year due to cigarette smoking than due to airplane crashes. The number of mental health reports in the media which have explicit or implied content about perceived risk to the public posed by people with mental illness is totally disproportionate to the actual risk involved." (The Discrimination Times, August 2000) ***************************************************** New York Times 1/6/02 Warning:  Advocacy can be hazardous to your health! I coined the term PsychoMedia out of a sense of frustration. It was my way of satirizing the media's obsessive, compulsive need to portray people labeled mentally-ill as violent and deranged. It was my way of saying (tongue-in-cheek): "If there's anyone guilty of manic behavior here, it is the media, not those of us labeled mentally-ill." It is the only "politically correct" form of discrimination that the media can get away with. But even more disturbing is the fact that while many so-called advocacy organizations privately condone these stereotypes by refusing to denounce them, others openly condone them. One nationally recognized advocacy association even suggests on their website that we should have a "sense of humor" and embrace these stereotypes. Never mind the fact that their constituents are routinely denied housing, employment and their most basic constitutional rights as a result of these stereotypes. And this is considered advocacy. This advocacy association which claims to be "the voice of the mentally-ill" feigns concern over the use of "offensive words" in New York Times crossword puzzles, yet expressed no concern whatsoever over the following cartoon commentary in the very same newspaper: "Felicia Patterson hasn't even been born yet, but she'll be raped by a prematurely-released mental patient - so the rich can get their tax cut." ***************************************************** MEDIA HYPE ON MENTAL ILLNESS & VIOLENCE by PHYLLIS VINE Buried deep in a New York Times story (1/30/01) about the brutal murder of Dartmouth professors Susanne and Half Zantop, resides a common prejudice linking violence with mental illness. Speculating on the reason for the attack, the paper noted that Half Zantop "had once tried to help a mentally-ill young man." When two local youth were arrested - neither suffering from overt psychosis - the knee-jerk response seemed groundless. Yet the initial impression associating the crime with mental illness had already been molded. When a Manhattan woman was assaulted with a brick by an unknown assailant, the New York Daily News (11/19/99) ran two-inch block letters across the front-page demanding: "Get The Violent Crazies off Our Streets." The New York Times (11/20/99) flayed the Daily News for its throat-grabbing covers, but not for its erroneous assumptions. When the eventual suspect turned out to be neither schizophrenic nor bi-polar, the pundits were hardly apologetic. "Drake turns out not to have been the insane box-dweller many thought an eventual brick-attack suspect would be," New York Post columnist Rod Dreher said (12/2/99). But some just kept hammering away on the mentally-ill: "Whatever Drake's mental condition might be, those loons on the loose who pose threats to the citizenry are still out there because of mental illness policies that need to be revised," opined Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch (12/2/99). Despite the seemingly inextricable media link between mental illness and violence, scientific research has cast doubt on the causal connection. A 3-year study funded by the MacArthur Foundation and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (5/98) compared discharged mental patients with others in their communities. For those without an alcohol or drug problem, no difference in violence was found. The authors wrote: "There was no significant difference between the prevalence of violence by patients without symptoms of substance abuse and the prevalence of violence by others living in the same neighborhoods who were also without symptoms of substance abuse. Despite some coverage of this study (it appeared in the New York Times under the misleading headline "Studies of Mental Illness Show Links to Violence" 5/15/98), an opposing image persists in the press. Helping to keep this myth alive is the mantra of "1,000 homicides a year" chanted by the TAC (Treatment Advocacy Center). As president of the TAC, E. Fuller Torrey is a man on a mission: to force people with schizophrenia and manic-depression into involuntary treatment. Once considered the patron saint of the family advocacy movement, his clamor for involuntary outpatient treatment in the last 5 years has dimmed his leadership and threatened the coherence of the movement he helped to shape (Mental Health Weekly - 2/19/01). Torrey explains his obsession for forcing people into treament: "These folks" he says, "are responsible for 20 murders a week, 1,000 a year." Torrey's 1997 book Out of the Shadows explained that he extrapolated the 1,000 figure from six news stories about 13 homicides committed by mentally-ill people in Washington, D.C., in 1992. On the TAC website Torrey also cites 1988 data from the Department of Justice which reported 4.3 percent of all defendants in murder trials had a history of mental illness. He turned this into 1,000 murders a year, he says, by rounding upward to account for unsolved and unreported murders. Despite the sharp decline in the murder rate over the last several years, Torrey continues to use the same estimate. Others at the Treatment Advocacy Center have acknowledged that the focus on the violence of the mentally-ill is in part a cynical ploy to encourage funding for treatment. "People care about public safety," TAC publicist D.J. Jaffee told a workshop at the 1999 meetings of NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally-ill). "Once you understand that, it means that you have to take the debate out of the mental health arena and put it in the criminal justice/public safety arena." He had earlier advised a local New York advocacy group (SIAMI Newsletter, Vol. 9/12, 1994), "It may be necessary to capitalize on the fear of violence." Mindless & Deadly ***************************************************** Research shows that people labeled "mentally-ill" are no more dangerous than the general population, yet repeatedly we are singled out with such headlines as "Mental Patient Kills Two". Why not a comparable headline: "Normal Person Kills Two"? (Ron Schraiber, M.A., Director, LA County Office of Consumer Affairs, The Well-Being Project) ***************************************************** The Cost of Being Branded Mentally-ill In a case which infuriated rational-minded, peace-loving, law-abiding New Yorkers, law enforcement officers who murdered a man branded "mentally-ill" were exonerated of this execution-style slaying based on the testimony of one eyewitness, even though the testimony of six other eyewitness refuted the veracity of his testimony. And consistent with the media's bias of people labeled "mentally-ill," this balanced newspaper report waters down the true version of events referring to Gidone Busch as a "hammer-wielding mentally-ill man," while failing to report that all of the five officers opened fire on Gidone (Gary) at the same time and that according to some of the eyewitness accounts, Gary was actually fleeing into his house when he was gunned down. The article goes on to say that Gary was shot twelve times, when the actual facts are that while Gary was struck twelve times with the 9MM bullets - which pierced his heart, lungs, liver and intestines - he was actually shot at sixteen times. The report then states as fact that Officer O'Brien "had been hit with the hammer on his arm and side", even though six eyewitnesses refuted this claim and only one testified that Gary was "lunging" at the officers. And what truly disturbs me about this jury's verdict is that out of seven eyewitnesses they chose to believe the one eyewitness who's version of the events opposed the testimony of the other six eyewitnesses. Even more disturbing however, is that according to the account reported in the New York Times "the single witness they called who said Mr. Busch was lunging at the police provided details of the shooting, including the number of officers he said took part, which did not match those of any other witness - including the officers." One would be hard-pressed to believe that there is not more behind this verdict than meets the eye (New York Post, 11/18/03). Amazingly, one of the jurors quoted in this article even stated: "The officers did something like self-defense (?) They had to protect themselves." I can't help but wonder what the outcome of this case would have been if an organization as wealthy, as influential, and as politically-connected as "the voice of the mentally-ill" had simply stood up and said: "the killing of innocent people labeled mentally-ill must stop!" Did they suddenly develop a severe case of laryngitis? David @ mentalhealthstigma.com ************************************************* "Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no matter who commits it." (Edgar Z. Friedenberg, New York Review of Books, Oct. 20th, 1966) ***************************************************** Bulletin Editor, former Brown University Fellow Assistant Director Peer Specialist Training Program Executive Director Peer Advocacy Center THE REAL FACE OF MENTAL HEALTH RECIPIENTS ***************************************************** Why does the Media consistently perpetuate stigma, Yet Not One Member of the Media Felt that the Following September 11th story was Worthy of Mention? On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center Towers, while most of the offices around them were shutting down and fleeing the city, the Director of Community Access's Employment and Training Center (a mental health community service agency which is located four blocks away from "ground zero") refused to evacuate and close the center's doors, and instead, the training center became a sanctuary of refuge for hundreds of stunned survivors who were frightened, confused and disoriented. Within minutes, those very people whom the media typically portrays as violent and deranged were on the front lines offering support and providing comfort in this time of dire need. Even the NYPD and Fire Department personnel were directing debris-laden victims to the center. The cruel irony behind this story is that with all of the heroes who were being recognized and honored on a daily basis following this disaster, not one member of the media felt that this was a story worthy of mention. Why has no national media conglomerate come forward to report this story? Is it because then there would be no one left to conveniently scapegoat? Or is it because then the American taxpayers might get wind of the fact that their hard-earned tax dollars are being squandered on forced treatment and incarceration, which only re-traumatizes "the mentally-ill", thereby justifying the need for more of their hard-earned tax dollars for further treatment? (January 1, 2002) ***************************************************** PsychoMedia Message Board ***************************************************** Links to the real StigmaBusters: Don't Settle for Anything Less For additional information about stigma and the media portrayal of mental illness logon to the following websites: The National Stigma Clearinghouse website was created by Jean Arnold, a community activist, and Nora Weinerth, a communications consultant, to track stigmatizing stereotypes of mental illness and to provide up-to-date information about stigma. http://www.stigmanet.org Lichtenstein Creative Media specializes in productions focusing on mental health, human rights and other social issues. Their weekly public radio show "The Infinite Mind" recently broadcast a program called "Mental Illness and the Media". This program explores the link between negative portrayals of people with mental illness and stigma. "Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness" by Dr. Otto Wahl: This book details the many ways in which mass media portrays people with psychiatric disabilities. Dr. Wahl takes an in-depth look at the inaccurate stereotypes created by newspapers, books, advertisements, movies and television. Media Madness was nominated by the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights as "an outstanding book on human rights in North America." Dr. Otto Wahl is a Professor of Psychology. MendOutreach: While the major emphasis of CineMania has been to expose the negative stereotypes commonly projected by the media, this past February (2003), MendOutreach, located in Jasksonville, Florida, posted an anti-stigma website displaying pictures of famous men and women who do not fit the medias' stereotypical mold of "the mentally-ill." Originally intended to focus strictly on the question of suicide, MendOutreach also decided to address the question of stigma as well. A complimentary counter-balance to "the stigma of CineMania." www.onourownmd.org: In March of 2001 "On Our Own" of Baltimore, Maryland, hosted a National Mental Health Symposium to Address Discrimination and Stigma. The symposium was joined by the Surgeon General, leading anti-stigma experts, and members of the media to formulate a blueprint for confronting and eliminating stigma. The Guide to Stigma Busters Website was designed by Mr. Otto Wahl who is a Professor of Psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia. He is the author of "Telling is Risky Business: Mental Health Consumers Confront Stigma" and "Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness" which details in-depth the media portrayal of mental illness. The site also contains numerous links to other practical, useful and current information. http://www.iso.gmu.edu/~owahl/INDEX.HTM has crafted his solo album "Train of Tears" the hard way. As a former member of a number of successful rock bands, including American Train which toured England in the late 70's, the drummer/guitarist saw his whole world change several years ago with the onset of a psychiatric diagnosis of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and depression. www.mskinnermusic.com ***************************************************** Media Madness Links: Mindless and Deadly - Common Misconceptions  Police Killing Sparks Rampage - Mental Illness and Violence - The Death of Gidone Busch Copyright © 2007 MentalHealthStigma.com, All Rights Reserved Fair Use Notice: Please note that MentalHealthStigma.com contains copyrighted (©) material, the use of which has not necessarily been authorized by the copyright owner. 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