TY - JOUR
T1 - Lay theories and criticisms of mental health news
T2 - elaborating the concept of biocommunicability
AU - Holland, Kate
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - This article examines how mental health service users/consumers, advocates, professionals and researchers interpret and theorise the impacts of mental health news. It focuses on the following themes: Creating fears about mental illness by focusing on criminal and violent acts; Reinforcing power imbalances by privileging biomedical issues and sources; and Sanitising mental health issues through the selective use of personal narratives. The study draws upon the concept of biocommunicability, which casts light on the performative power of health news in reinforcing ideas and expectations about the appropriate role for different actors to adopt in relation to health knowledge. Previous research on health news has identified biomedical authority, patient-consumer and public sphere as three predominant models of biocommunicability and this article examines how these are bound up with criticisms of mental health news. The findings are related to the ‘mediatisation of psychiatric culture’ as one of extremes and perspectives from Mad Studies.
AB - This article examines how mental health service users/consumers, advocates, professionals and researchers interpret and theorise the impacts of mental health news. It focuses on the following themes: Creating fears about mental illness by focusing on criminal and violent acts; Reinforcing power imbalances by privileging biomedical issues and sources; and Sanitising mental health issues through the selective use of personal narratives. The study draws upon the concept of biocommunicability, which casts light on the performative power of health news in reinforcing ideas and expectations about the appropriate role for different actors to adopt in relation to health knowledge. Previous research on health news has identified biomedical authority, patient-consumer and public sphere as three predominant models of biocommunicability and this article examines how these are bound up with criticisms of mental health news. The findings are related to the ‘mediatisation of psychiatric culture’ as one of extremes and perspectives from Mad Studies.
KW - biocommunicability
KW - journalism
KW - Mad Studies
KW - media criticism
KW - mental health
KW - news
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056183134&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE140100100
U2 - 10.1080/09687599.2018.1487831
DO - 10.1080/09687599.2018.1487831
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85056183134
SN - 0968-7599
VL - 33
SP - 1327
EP - 1348
JO - Disability and Society
JF - Disability and Society
IS - 8
ER -