Mental health carer lashes out at media

By Rosie Lavan

A CARE worker has criticised the media for the negative spin it puts on mental illness.

Ginny Sell, project manager at Hillside Clubhouse on Camden Road, said that the sensational language often used to describe mental ill health damaged the way the public approach the issue.

Hillside Clubhouse is a voluntary sector charity that helps adults with experience of mental illness back into employment.

Ms Sell singled out terms like “lunatic”, “maniac” and “schizo” as examples.

She said: “There’s not much kudos in bringing mental illness in the press down to a mundane level – which it is: statistically one in four people will experience mental ill health.”

While more information is available now about “the archetypes”, stress and depression, Ms Sell said that there was still ignorance about more serious “perceptionally scary” disorders, such as schizophrenia.

Sue Roberts, who handles complaints about coverage of mental health for the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), said that ignorance was often to blame and that inaccuracies in articles caused offence: “Very often things are seen to be discriminatory because they are just plain wrong.”

She said that while the PCC regulates standards of accuracy and ethics in the press, it has no control over the content of newspapers, but that media coverage of mental illness is fairer now than in the past.

“Our observations generally have been that reporting of mental illnesses has very much improved.”

Although she said that the “mental health bogeyman” still reared its head in coverage of crimes committed by the mentally ill, in general “the old taboos seem to have gone and mental illness is not so much [treated as] this scary, frightening thing.”

Ms Roberts was especially optimistic that red top tabloid newspapers have changed their approach to this issue: “That’s really quite a move forward. It is things like that which I think are real markers.”

She cited the “Bonkers Bruno” incident as a turning point, when The Sun was attacked for its insensitive handling of the announcement that Frank Bruno was suffering from depression in 2003. The boxer was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The newspaper faced a deluge of complaints and reversed the line it had taken on the story in favour of more sympathetic coverage.

Ms Roberts said that the increasing number of celebrities and people in the public eye who have spoken about their own mental health problems was helping to tip the balance of public sympathy.

Robert Westhead, a spokesman for Shift, a government-run initiative that challenges the stigma surrounding mental illness, agreed.

Mr Westhead said that well-known faces such as Frank Bruno and Stephen Fry had “made an invaluable contribution to society” by speaking about their mental health problems and raising public awareness.

“They have a massive impact – far more than we can.”

In September this year Stephen Fry presented a series on BBC 2 about manic depression, and spoke candidly about his own experiences as one of the 4 million sufferers of bipolar disorder in Britain.

But Mr Westhead said it was hard for people to avoid words which can cause offence.

“There is an issue about the language of mental health," he said.

"You could be terribly PC about it and say you should never use words like psycho and crazy, but it is a difficult balance to strike because they are part of our language.”