Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:51:38.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Media representation of depression in young people: a corpus-based analysis of Irish newspaper coverage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. Tobin  and
F. Lyddy
G. Tobin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
F. Lyddy*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
*
*Address for correspondence: F. Lyddy, Senior Lecturer, Ph.D., CPsychol, Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Objectives

Newspaper media are an important source of information regarding mental health and have a significant influence on people’s awareness of, and decision making around, mental health issues. Depression in young people has seen increasing media attention in recent years, but few studies have examined media representation of mental health, specifically in young people. The current study used a quantitative approach to examine the words used in reports concerning depression in young people, in Irish broadsheets, published between 2007 and 2011.

Method

A sample of 269 texts, containing 176 223 words, was collected from three Irish broadsheet newspapers, using the search terms ‘depression’ or ‘depressed’ or ‘mental health’ and ‘youth’ or ‘young people’. A corpus-based approach was used to examine word frequencies, clusters and keywords.

Results

The analysis identified textual patterns, suggesting recurring associations between youth depression and suicide, and, to a lesser extent, alcohol use and bullying. Keywords relating to emotional distress and symptoms of depression were less frequent and sometimes associated with constructions inferring lack of agency (such as ‘suffering from’). A focus on the role of the parents was also evident. Of the professions mentioned, psychiatrists were referred to most often.

Conclusions

The analysis suggests that media coverage of depression in young people accurately reflects concerns reported in surveys by young people, but provides less information that might help in recognising depression in a young person.

Keywords

Depressionmediamental healthnewspapersyoung people
Type
Original Research
Information
Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 21 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © College of Psychiatrists of Ireland 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, M (2003). ‘One flew over the psychiatric unit’: mental illness and the media. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 10, 297–306.Google Scholar
Baker, P (2006). Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. Continuum: London.Google Scholar
Biber, D (1988). Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bondi, M, Scott, M (2010). Keyness in Texts. Benjamins: Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Brent, DA, Perper, JA, Moritz, G, Allman, CJ, Friend, A, Roth, C, Schweers, J, Balach, L, Baugher, M (1993). Psychiatric risk factors for adolescent suicide: A case control study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 32, 521–529.Google Scholar
Carr, A (2003). Depression and Attempted Suicide in Adolescence. Blackwell: Oxford.Google Scholar
Carr, A (2008). Depression in young people: description, assessment and evidence-based treatment. Developmental Neurorehabilitation 11, 3–15.Google Scholar
Clarke, J, Gawley, A (2009). The triumph of pharmaceuticals: the portrayal of depression from 1980 to 2005. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research 36, 91–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, JN (2011). Childhood depression and mass print magazines in the USA and Canada: 1983–2008. Child & Family Social Work 16, 52–60.Google Scholar
Costello, E, Mustillo, S, Keeler, G, Angold, A (2004). Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. In Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective (ed. B. L. Levin, J. Petrila and K. Hennessy), pp. 111–128. Oxford University Press: New York.Google Scholar
Cullen, J (2006). Meanings, Messages and Myths: The Coverage and Treatment of Suicide in the Irish Print Media. Health Service Executive: Dublin.Google Scholar
Doyle, G, Cafferkey, K, Fullam, J (2012). The European Health Literacy Survey: Results from Ireland (http://healthliteracy.ie/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/EU-Health-Literacy-Survey-Full-Report.pdf). Accessed 5 November 2012.Google Scholar
Dunning, T (1993). Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics 19, 61–74.Google Scholar
Fava, M (2003). Symptoms of fatigue and cognitive/executive dysfunction in major depressive disorder before and after antidepressant treatment. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 64 (Suppl. 14), 30–34.Google Scholar
Foster, JLH (2006). Media presentation of the mental health bill and representations of mental health problems. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 16, 285–300.Google Scholar
Francis, C, Pirkis, J, Blood, RW, Dunt, D, Burgess, P, Morley, B, Stewart, A, Putnis, P (2004). The portrayal of mental health and illness in Australian non-fiction media. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 38, 541–546.Google Scholar
Gabrielatos, C, Baker, P (2008). Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: a corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 1996–2005. Journal of English Linguistics 36, 5–38.Google Scholar
Galvin, R (2003). The making of the disabled identity: a linguistic analysis of marginalisation. Disability Studies Quarterly 23, 149–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grilli, R, Ramsay, C, Minozzi, S (2002). Mass media interventions: effects on health services utilisation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews Issue 1. Art. No.: CD000389. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000389.Google Scholar
Headstrong (2012). My World Survey. Headstrong: Dublin.Google Scholar
Health Service Executive (HSE) (2007). Mental Health in Ireland: Awareness and Attitudes (http://www.healthpromotion.ie/hp-files/docs/HSP00612.pdf). Accessed 11 October 2012.Google Scholar
Henson, C, Chapman, S, McLeod, L, Johnson, N, McGeechan, K, Hickie, I (2009). More us than them: positive depictions of mental illness on Australian television news. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 43, 554–560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Iliffe, S, Williams, G, Fernandez, V, Kramer, T, Gledhill, J, Miller, L. (2008). General practitioners’ understanding of depression in young people: qualitative study. Primary Health Care Research & Development 9, 269–279.Google Scholar
Jaworska, S, Krishnamurthy, R (2012). On the F word: a corpus-based analysis of the media representation of feminism in British and German press discourse, 1990–2009. Discourse & Society 23, 401–431.Google Scholar
Jorm, AF (2000). Mental health literacy. Public knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry 177, 396–401.Google Scholar
Jorm, AF, Korten, AE, Jacomb, PA, Christensen, H, Rodgers, B, Pollitt, P (1997). Mental health literacy: a survey of the public’s ability to recognise mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of treatment. Medical Journal of Australia 166, 182–186.Google Scholar
Kalucy, M (2011). Comparison of British National Newspaper coverage of homicide committed by perpetrators with and without mental illness. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 45, 539–548.Google Scholar
Lawlor, E, Breslin, JG, Renwick, L, Foley, S, Mulkerrin, U, Kinsella, A, Turner, N, O’Callaghan, E (2008). Mental health literacy among Internet users. Early Intervention in Psychiatry 2, 247–255.Google Scholar
Leech, G, Rayson, P, Wilson, A (2001). Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus. Longman: London.Google Scholar
Lewison, G, Roe, P, Wentworth, A, Szmukler, G (2012). The reporting of mental disorders research in the British media. Psychological Medicine 42, 435–441.Google Scholar
Lilienfeld, SO, Lynn, SJ, Ruscio, J, Beyerstein, BL (2010). 50 great myths of popular psychology. Wiley-Blackwell: New York.Google Scholar
Lynch, F, Mills, C, Daly, I, Fitzpatrick, C (2006). Challenging times: prevalence of psychiatric disorders and suicidal behaviours in Irish adolescents. Journal of Adolescence 29, 555–573.Google Scholar
McCarty, CA, Vander Stoep, A, McCauley, E (2007). Cognitive features associated with depressive symptoms in adolescence: directionality and specificity. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 36, 147–158.Google Scholar
McEnery, T, Hardie, A (2012). Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Musacchio, MT (2006). Quality in published Italian specialised translations. In Insights into Specialized Translation (ed. M. Gotti and S. Sarcevic), pp. 173–192. Peter Lang: Bern.Google Scholar
Olstead, R (2002). Contesting the text: Canadian media depictions of the conflation of mental illness and criminality. Sociology of Health & Illness 24, 621–643.Google Scholar
Rao, U, Ryan, ND, Birmaher, B, Dahl, RE, Williamson, DE, Kaufman, J, Rao, R, Nelson, B (1995). Unipolar depression in adolescents: clinical outcomes in adulthood. Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 34, 566–578.Google Scholar
Reavley, NJ, Jorm, AF (2012). Public recognition of mental disorders and beliefs about treatment: changes in Australia over 16 years. British Journal of Psychiatry 200, 419–425.Google Scholar
Scott, M (2000). Focusing on the text and its key words. In Rethinking Language Pedagogy from a Corpus Perspective, vol. 2 (ed. L. Burnard and T. McEnery), pp. 103–122. Peter Lang: Frankfurt.Google Scholar
Scott, M (2008). WordSmith Tools version 5. Lexical Analysis Software: Liverpool.Google Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, E (2001). Corpus Linguistics at Work. John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, CJ, Rickwood, D, Deane, FP (2007). Depressive symptoms and help-seeking intentions in young people. Clinical Psychologist 11, 98–107.Google Scholar
Wright, A, Jorm, AF, Mackinnon, AJ (2012). Labels used by young people to describe mental disorders: which ones predict effective help-seeking choices? Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 47, 917–926.Google Scholar