Quick summary: Mass media shapes how people understand and respond to mental illness, often reinforcing fear, ridicule and distorted stereotypes rather than accurate portrayals, which leaves audiences, especially children and young people, more vulnerable to poor social attitudes, aggression and stigma driven silence around treatment. This stigma has a direct cost to health, discouraging people from seeking care, weakening adherence to treatment and undermining recovery, while heavy or unmanaged news consumption adds further strain through intrusive thoughts, anxiety and stress related coping such as increased alcohol use. Journalists, clinicians and policy makers all have a role to play, from improving training and expert input in media production to helping patients manage headline stress, because how mental illness is depicted in the media has a measurable bearing on public well being and on whether people get the support they need.

Mass media has a strong effect on our expectations for family, parents and children, shaping our standards for affection, worship and our general way of life. Put simply, we view reality through the lens of our own experience, and that experience is shaped by two forces: our primary groups and various forms of mass media. Primary groups, mainly family and friends, carry less influence than they once did, while media’s impact keeps growing as it becomes a more permanent and pervasive part of daily life.

The influence of mass media increases as the number and strength of other influences decreases.

There is little debate left about whether the media shapes the thinking, behaviour and emotions of people around the world; the question now is how. These effects can be prosocial or antisocial. Too often, the media models negative reactions to mental health issues, including fear, rejection and ridicule. Mass media acts as a vehicle for socialisation, helping to construct and extend the perceptions and learned behaviours we carry through life.

As a central and major source of information, mass media does not simply reflect public attitudes and values; it plays a crucial part in shaping them. Some of this shaping is deliberate, driven by advertising revenue. At other times, media achieves social good through sponsored programming, or serves a political purpose through biased or paid news coverage. Media has helped break down misconceptions and myths about homosexuality and HIV/AIDS. We can only hope it will do the same for mental health.

Mass media and its effect on younger audiences

Younger minds are particularly susceptible to media influence, partly because of concrete thinking and an underdeveloped ability to separate fantasy from reality, especially when the content mirrors real life closely. Time spent with media also eats into time that would otherwise go towards sport, physical activity, community service, cultural pursuits and family life. Children who watch more television tend to struggle more with comprehending and understanding stories among their peers, a skill that matters greatly for academic success.

As the younger generation spends more time watching television or gaming, the time they spend with friends and family shrinks accordingly. This can lead to poor relationships and raises the risk of social isolation and antisocial behaviour, including aggression and gang involvement. In turn, many young people turn back to media to escape the stresses of life and to meet social needs they are no longer meeting elsewhere.

Violent media can make children more socially withdrawn and isolated, which then draws them towards more violent content, sometimes leading to acts of violence and aggression themselves. After watching such acts, children often imitate the behaviour they have seen, modelling themselves on the actor or actress on screen, particularly when that character is rewarded for aggression or violence. Once a violent scene has played out, children and young adults often absorb poor social attitudes and aggressive approaches to solving problems.

Excessive exposure to violence has a negative effect on children’s psychosocial development and school performance. Fears, tension, bad dreams and a tendency towards delinquency have all been linked to frequent, regular exposure to media saturated with violence, torture and murder. Studies have found a direct relationship between how often children watch films and television depicting horror and violence, and the likelihood of violent behaviour later on, including a link between playing violent video games as an adolescent and violent acts committed as a teenager. Sad, but true.

The impact and stigma of media on mental health

There are five main ways media driven stigma affects mental health.

1. Self stigma is the internalised shame, negative beliefs and negative attitudes people develop about their own mental health condition.
2. Incorrect information happens when people absorb the wrong ideas about symptoms of mental illness, which often leads to inaccurate assumptions about how conditions are diagnosed and treated.
3. Barriers to treatment arise when people internalise stigmatised attitudes about mental health and, as a result, become less likely to seek treatment when they are symptomatic.
4. Poor treatment adherence relates to how social support and encouragement affect recovery. Negative attitudes and stereotypes can contribute to worse attitudes towards treatment and weaker adherence.
5. Self-diagnosis happens when people diagnose themselves based on content that has gone viral on social media. This information is then shared with others who are not mental health professionals, and it is often inaccurate.

Before any of this can be put right, we need a better understanding of how these messages spread through the media in the first place. Unfortunately, there is still limited research into how the media portrays mental health stereotypes and stigma. That said, a number of suggestions have been made for improving how mental illness is depicted.

• Analysing mass media production procedures
• Introducing a short mental health course as part of journalist training
• Including expert input during production.
• Preferring non individualised descriptions.
• Presenting mental illness only when it is relevant to the story.
• Using mental health terminology with precision, fairness and expertise.

In an article for the American Psychological Association’s e newsletter in November 2022, Charlotte Huff wrote about how consuming too much news, whether watching or reading, can harm both mind and body. Clinicians who watch for the following symptoms can help reduce spiralling stress in their patients:

• Intrusive thoughts about news or current events throughout the day
• Persistent anger, resentment or anxiety brought on by news stories
• Increased alcohol use as a way of self medicating stress
• Diminished interest in activities other than following the news.

Headline stress can affect anyone. Huff offered several strategies for managing it:

• Write the headline down, to slow the processing of it.
• Turn off smartphone news notifications altogether.
• Set a timer for 15 minutes when listening to the news, to limit engagement time.
• Keep meals a strict no screen zone, phones included.
• Build in other tech free periods throughout the day.
• Take action to ease anxiety, whether that means donating to a cause or signing a petition.

The consequences of negative media portrayals for people living with mental health issues are profound. They can and do damage self esteem, help seeking behaviour, medication adherence and overall recovery. Time and again, both news media and entertainment have been shown to offer overly dramatic and distorted portrayals of mental health issues, with a heavy emphasis on dangerousness, criminality and unpredictability. The focus needs to shift towards the whole person, rather than fixating on someone’s mental illness. Recovery is not only possible. It is probable.