Moral Panic on Mental Illness - Essay Example

Moral Panic on Mental Illness Theories on Moral Panic Moral panic is simply a grossly exaggerated and widely shared fear in society of a newly discovered threat from an old form of deviance. The deviant persons or out-of-the-norm phenomena made as objects of this fear have been around for a long time, brought to the attention of society and media only by an incident or two that had the effect of a sudden eruption. Stanley Cohen, who coined the term in the 1960s, set the textbook definition of moral panic thus: " a form of collective behaviour in which a condition, episode, a person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. Its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-minded people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or more often resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible." Another theory describes moral panic as "a process in which individuals receive a group stereotype they did not have before, and is described with blanket statements and exaggerated reports," (Thompson, K., 1998) which only serves to underline the fact that the threats feeding this panic are unwarranted and without ample justification. Sociologists agree that there is moral panic when the following conditions exist: 1) Volatility - there is a sudden outburst of concern about a newly perceived threat to society from people regarded as moral deviants, and then it subsides just as suddenly. 2) Hostility - the deviants posing the perceived threat are regarded with intense hostility as enemies of society such that stereotypes of evil behaviour are attributed to them. 3) Measurable concern - the public's fear about the threat can be measured in concrete ways, such as attitude surveys. 4) Consensus - there is a consensus in significant segments of the population that the threat is real and serious. 5) Disproportionateness - notions on the numbers of moral deviants being feared and the extent of the harm they can do are disproportionate with the actual numbers of these deviants and the harm they are capable of doing. In all cases, deviants are few in numbers and the harm they can do is limited, even non-existent on both counts. Since the threat that suddenly causes moral panic comes from an old phenomenon, it follows that the deviancy and deviants involved are mere creations of society. The action perceived as deviant as well as the people who engage in it became a "deviance" only because of this labeling anomaly. Much of the blame for this stereotyping practice that leads to moral panic is flung at media, which thrives mostly on exaggeration and sensationalism to boost sales. Media organizations show this bias in their choice of language and photos, space or time allocation and the editorial importance they attach to stories, because they want society to perceive events in a certain way. Burns, H.(2002) There are three distinct types of moral panic, according to Goode & Ben-Yehuda (1994). These are: 1) the grass roots model - the concern and anger about a threat from a perceived deviant are a response of a broad spectrum of society and population to persistent and widespread stresses; 2) elite-engineered mode - when moral panic is orchestrated by a power elite using social institutions to fight the threat from the perceived deviants, with the side purpose of protecting the elite's economic and political interests; and 3) the interest group model - moral panic is the unintended result of moral crusades launched by specific interest groups. An example of the interest group model of moral panic is the white slavery scare in the US from 1907 to 1914, which was fanned by fundamentalist Protestants and the women's suffragette movement. The media stories at the time claimed that organised syndicates were kidnapping young women and forcing them into prostitution. As a result, hundreds of unmarried, cohabiting and adulterous men were imprisoned. Another such case would be the baby parts scare in Latin American countries orchestrated by communists and their leftist sympathizers in that region to express their anger against American capitalism. At the height of the panic, American visitors were indiscriminately attacked in Guatemala and two American women were mobbed for supposedly looking for children to kidnap and mutilate for their body parts. The Role of Media All the literature and knowledge about moral panic and the role of media therein trace their sociological origin with the first of such phenomena recorded by Cohen on Easter Sunday 1964 in Clacton beach resort, England. Two gangs of bikers called Mods and Rockers fought in that resort and police had 97 people arrested "for disturbing the peace." It seemed all the damage done were vandalized beach cottages and broken windows. But the following day, the London newspapers screamed such headlines as "Day of terror by scooter groups (Daily Telegraph)" and "Wild ones invade seaside (Daily Mirror)." The hysterical media reaction to the event, as interpreted by Cohen, further showed in the text of the headline stories which brought in uncalled-for descriptions like orgy, riot, siege and screaming mob. In sum, the media coverage of the bikers' clash exaggerated the reports as to the actual number of participants and the extent of the damage. Cohen, on the way to documenting his initial theory on moral panic based on the Mods vs. Rockers rumble, chronicled another case in Britain that made out the hallucinogenic drug ecstasy as the deviance and the people using it as deviants threatening societal values and interests. One of these people was Brian Harvey of the East 17 band who paid dearly for his admission that he took ecstasy - he was branded a modern-day heretic and kicked out of the band even as all songs of the band itself were banned from 13 British radio stations. As this was going on, a woman named Leah Betts died from a supposed overdose of the same drug. The British media lost no time raising a panic over ecstasy and similar substances, comparing the act of selling them to "slaughtering babies (Independent)." As it turned out, Betts actually drowned from an excess of water intake when she took the drug. The Glasgow Department of Social Services through its director, Mary Hartnoll, tried to straighten out things with an official statement that based on medical studies the risk of death from ecstasy is 1 in 6 million and that the risk is in fact greater from an ordinary dose of aspirin. Hartnoll was roundly castigated in media for this, too. More such moral panics, Cohen then predicted, "will be generated and other as yet unnamed folk devils will be created. This is not because such developments have an inexorable inner logic but because our society as presently structured will continue to generate problems for some of its members and then condemn whatever solution these groups find." In most cases, this engenders social movements aimed at eliminating the threatening deviants and may in turn generate moral crusades and political struggles over use of the law to suppress the offending deviants. Riots and ethnic pogroms may eventually occur. Jeffrey, V. (1998) Mental Illness and Media A subject that effectively demonstrates how mass media - newspapers, radio, television and films - promotes negative images and stereotypes is mental illness. So powerful are media representations of this problem that they can override people's own personal experiences in relation to how they view mental illness. Edney, D. (2004) Thus, even if people know from experience that a village idiot with a certain type of mental illness appears harmless, media influences them to regard the idiot as a potential threat. The National Mental Health Association in the US published in 1977 a study titled "Stigma Matters: Assessing the Media's Impact on Public Perceptions of Mental Illness." Based on the study, TV news magazines account for 70 per cent of all the information the public gets on mental illness. Newspapers follow with 58 percent; TV news, 51 percent; news magazines, 34 percent; TV talkshows, 31 percent; radio news, 26 percent; other magazines, 26 percent; Internet, 25 percent; non-fiction books, 25 percent; radio talk shows, 18 percent; and women's magazines, 18 percent. While stories about people with mental health problems were seldom out of the newspaper headlines or plotlines in films and on TV, media portrayals of the problem were often false and negative. In 2001, the Australian government commissioned an expansive literature review of dozens of news and entertainment media from around the globe on how media portrays mental aberrations. One of the more persistent data that came out of the study was the false connection frequently made between mental illness and violence resulting in the public's attitude that mentally ill people are dangerous. All in all, the study established that: mass media is the primary source of public information about mental illness, with television as the most powerful with rarely a week going by without references on it; there is a connection between negative media portrayals of mental illness and the public's negative attitudes toward people with such a problem; media representations of mental illness promote false and negative images and stereotypes; negative media portrayals also have an adverse impact on individuals living with a mental illness; and there is a connection between negative media portrayals of mental illness and government responses to mental health issues. Similar studies conducted in other parts of the world arrived at the same basic conclusion. In 1999, George Mason University in Virginia, USA analysed 300 articles from six different newspapers that contained references to mental illness. It was found that few presented positive images or depicted people with mental illness as productive members of society. Instead the newspaper articles harped on the theme that mentally ill people are just burdens to society and incapable of doing their communities any good. This in turn is reflected in what people think. A content analysis of the newspaper articles showed that 62 per cent focused on the connection of mental illness with violence and crime. Not one ever mentioned that, as noted by the US-based National Mental Health Association, only 3-5 per cent of all acts of violence in that country is committed by someone with mental illness. Television is the worst offender, especially primetime drama and whodunits, in which 72 per cent of the adult characters are depicted as mentally unbalanced who kill and injure others. In a two-week sampler of TV programming in the US, characters with mental illness were found 10-20 times more violent than real individuals with psychiatric diagnoses in the US population over a one-year period. In reality, these people are believed harmless as anyone else, unless their mental condition is distorted by drug abuse. Monahan (1996)) According to Edney,D. (2004), people with mental illness are stereotyped in media as any of the following: rebellious free spirit, violent seductress, narcissistic parasite, mad scientist, sly manipulator, helpless and depressed female, comic relief. On TV, 43 per cent of characters with mental illness lacked comprehension of everyday adult roles, appeared lost and confused. They spoke in simple, childish language and voice, helpless and disheveled. Almost always they are also poor and/or homeless, being held by police for a crime about which they had little recall or understanding of having committed. In films and news reports, they are portrayed as separate from the general fabric of society, unemployed, without family or friends, roots or history, living on the fringe of the community - an inconvenience a best to those living nearby and worse, a danger to them. Because people with mental illness are depicted as "incomprehensible, unpredictable and unstable," they are considered unsafe, violent and dangerous. Why the public is easy prey to all these convoluted and negative media depictions of people with mental illness may be explained by the fact that media seldom inspects the other side of the coin, so to speak, as it does with regard to political issues and similar concerns. Only 7 per cent of all stories dealing with mental illness, according to the George Mason University study, presented the viewpoint of people so afflicted. Without such first-person accounts to give the affected people a chance to be heard, the perspectives available to the public are limited. This only serves to reinforce the perceptions and attitudes planted by the mass media. Attitudes Reinforced by Media The erroneous and negative associations made by media between mental illness and violence have been thoroughly woven into the fabric of public conscious as to ruin everything for the affected people. They encounter discrimination at every turn, their recovery from their ailment is discouraged, barriers are created against their finding decent housing, employment and education. Such stigmatisation and demonisation even influence people with mental illness into thinking that they are indeed beyond help and capable of ugly deeds. Reacting to the false realities created by media, the UK government, for example, has imposed budget cuts on its mental health program as part of a "more coercive" policy realignment. The apparent linchpin of the new policy is the belief that since the mentally ill are prone to violence anyway, scarce resources should be diverted to the purpose of safeguarding the public from that of maintaining psychiatric and community mental health services. A study of Canadian newspapers in 2002 found that stories on middle-class persons with mental illness concentrated on their high-status occupations, their prominent families and socio-economic privileges. When the illness involved poor people, the focus was on their behaviour underlining acts of criminality, violence and dangerousness. In effect, the poor people with mental illness are ridiculed and isolated. This reinforces the view that mental illness affects only disenfranchised people or a small minority, prompting governments to take the view that this does not warrant appropriate levels of funding for research, treatment facilities and community action. As for possible treatment, health care professionals are subjected to the same influence of negative media imagery and thus tend to approach mental patients with the same negative attitude. In addition, people with mental illness are hesitant to consult psychiatrists who have negative and stereotypical images in media themselves. The negative stereotypes of psychiatrists and psychologists are that they are neurotic, unable to maintain professional boundaries, drug or alcohol addicted, rigid, controlling, ineffectual, etc. As a result, very few people with mental illness seek treatment. In the US, the Department of Health and Human Services reported in 1999 that less than 50 per cent of people with mental illness seek treatment, while the Center for Addition and Mental Health in Canada placed the figure at 33 per cent in 2002. On the part of the people with mental illness, the stigma attached to them by media pushed them deeper into despair and hopelessness. A UK mental health institute called Mind surveyed 515 people with various mental disorders in 2002 and discovered that the negative media coverage made these people more withdrawn and isolated. Of those interviewed, 34 per cent said this increased their depression and anxiety, while 8 per cent said they felt suicidal as a result. Social Control Only mental health institutions appear to possess the facts about mental illness that could stop the damage caused by media for over four decades in generating moral panic over a group of deviants that do not deserve the label. This information should be disseminated as widely as possible to, first, make media realize the errors of their ways and, second, persuade the public that not all people with mental illness are criminally enclined, personify the demons themselves and capable of violence and, third, convince governments to react to the true needs of people with mental illness and not to false realities made out by the mass media. The arguments for such damage control include the finding that people with mental illness are no more likely to commit a violent crime than anyone else. In fact, 95-97 per cent of violent episode in the US are said to be committed by people with no mental illness. There is simply no evidence that mental illness alone is a significant risk factor for violence. Media should refrain from generalization, labeling people with mental illness as a "psychiatric patient." "mentally ill" and "crazy." There might be other reasons why one is acting in a bizarre way, such as drug abuse or diabetes. Among diabetics, extremely low blood sugar may lead to erratic and unpredictable behaviours. Then there is the need for a holistic view in dealing with the problem of mental health that will involve the spiritual dimension with the psychological, social and physical configurations. We look for demonisation in mental health patients when they behave, speak and think in ways difficult to understand. Cook, C. (1997) If science could not provide all the answers, we have to look elsewhere. Thus, spiritual discernment must be given equal if not greater importance in dealing with mental illness as part of the diagnostic mix. References Burns, Hayley (2002). "What are Moral Panics" Available from: Http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/students/hrb9701.html [accessed on 9 April 2006] Cohen, Stanley (1973). "Folk Devils and Moral Panics." St. Albany's: Paladin Cook, Chris (1997). "Demon Possession and Mental Illness." Kent Institute of Medicine and Health Siences, University of Kent, Canterbury, England Edney, Dara Roth (2004). "Mass Media and Mental Illness: A Literature Review." MSW Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario. Goode, Erich & Ben-Yehuda, Nachman (1994). "Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance." Oxford: Blackwell Thompson, Kenneth (1998). "Moral Panics." London and New York: Routledge. Jeffrey, Victor S. (1998) "Moral panics and the Social Construction of Deviant Behavior: Theory and Application to the Case of Ritual Child Abuse." Sociological Perspectives. Jamestown Community College, New York Read More