It is common to see media reports associating violence with mental health issues, but this is not entirely true, a new study has revealed.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have found that reports of the media about the mental health status of mass shooting suspects does not paint the entire picture. Media outfits rarely discuss that these individuals underwent successful treatments before they associate the violent behavior to existing mental health.
This lack of information creates a social stigma. People will look at those with mental behavior as someone who is violent and capable of committing a crime. Researchers said that if the media report mentions successful therapy of patients, the negative perception would be greatly reduced.
Researchers admit that, indeed, those that commit acts of violence are not mentally healthy — because hurting someone is never an act of a mentally stable individual.
"Anyone who kills people is not mentally healthy," said Johns Hopkins Health Policy and Management and Mental Health assistant professor and study lead author Emma McGinty. "But it's not necessarily true that they have a diagnosable illness. They may have anger or emotional issues, which can be clinically separate from a diagnosis of mental illness."
McGinty went on to say that media reports do not say that the violence is secondary to drug abuse or alcohol use, which stemmed from childhood abuse or poverty. The focus lies on the mental illness alone.
Media Sensationalism
For their study, the researchers analyzed 400 news articles that tackled mental health problems from 1994 to 2014.
They found that more than half of the news stories associated violence to mental illness, with about 29 percent referring to suicide and 38 percent about violence to another person or group of persons. The researchers also noted that only 47 percent included psychological treatments, with 14 percent of the articles discussing treatment process and patient recovery.
The degree of association seemed to increase as the researchers analyzed the reports. From 1994 to 2005, only 1 percent of new stories linked violence to mental illness. By 2005 to 2014, the association ballooned to 18 percent.
When it comes to mass shootings, news outlets seem to show that the numbers have significantly increased in recent years. About 9 percent of news articles in the first ten years of the study associated mass shootings with mental illness and by the second decade of the review, the incidence increased to more than two-fold at 22 percent.
However, a review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records showed that the numbers of incidents remained steady in the last 20 years.
The researchers concluded that the media reports reinforce the public's fear of mental illness and the social stigma for individuals who have it. It discourages people to seek help and treatment.
McGinty said that mental illness does not cause to be violent toward others and if people will rely on media reports only — there is no way of finding that out.
"Despite all of the work that has been done to reduce stigma associated with mental health issues, this portrayal of mental illness as closely linked with violence exacerbates a false perception about people with these illnesses, many of whom live healthy, productive lives," said McGinty.
The Obama administration, in an attempt to reduce the number of mass shootings, proposed to regulate the issuance of gun permits and increased access to mental health care.
The study is published in the June issue of Health Affairs.
