Psychiatric disorders in mass media and social networks: A media impact study

Abstract

Introduction

Every year, 1 million people commit suicide in the world. Major Depressive Disorder is the first cause of loss of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in developed countries.

Objective

To study the references to psychiatric disorders in the media and to measure their media impact compared with other topics such as politics, sports and tabloids.

Methods

We focused on the top-six journals in terms number of readers in the USA. Our research strategy included the introduction of several terms of interest (ex: “anxiety”) on each journal's Twitter account. The search was restricted to 2014, and yielded a database of 6296 news, which was categorized in four areas: health, politics, sports and tabloids.

Results

Six hundred and eighty-one (10.8%) news dealt with psychiatric disorders. The term with the highest impact in mass media was “suicide”, present in 1 of every 3 Psychiatrics-related news. Anorexia was the psychiatric disorder with the lowest impact (just 1 tweet). We noticed certain peaks-patterns in the number of tweets coincidentally with the suicide of any famous person. Within the total of terms included in our study, suicide ranked the 8th position regarding media impact.

Conclusions

Social networks can be a useful tool for the divulgation of mental disorders and their awareness among the general population. Despite psychiatric disorders are very prevalent and cause high morbidity, they have a relatively low media impact. Despite the WHO recommendation of avoiding specific information regarding the suicide of famous people, for preventive reasons, suicide is the psychiatric disorder with the highest media impact.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.