» Articles » PMID: 37563600

Spanish Media Coverage of Youth Mental Health Issues During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Overview
Journal BMC Psychiatry
Publisher Biomed Central
Specialty Psychiatry
Date 2023 Aug 10
PMID 37563600
Authors
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

Background: The media portrayal of mental health is relevant in shaping the population's attitudes towards mental disorders. However, there is little information about the representation of young mental health issues in the Spanish-language press, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The general objective of this study was to analyse the tone and content of Spanish newspaper articles about mental disorders in youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We collected media articles from the 10 most read news sources over a 6 month period (January-June 2021). These articles were coded for content using a standardised codebook, followed by an inductive thematic analysis. A total of 205 news items were evaluated.

Results: Results showed that the majority of the news items had an overall positive tone (68.3%), only 5.4% were stigmatising and only 7.3% were related to violence. However, few articles offered help seeking information (6%), adolescents were rarely quoted (14%) and children were never quoted. Substantial differences are described in terms of age, gender and disorder. The thematic analysis led to three emergent themes: (i) violence and victimisation; (ii) the COVID-19 pandemic; and (iii) technology and social media.

Conclusions: The percentage of news in the Spanish media that refer to young people's mental health in a stigmatising way or in a way associated with violence is very low. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic may have promoted more positive discussion about youth mental health. However, major challenges remain to be addressed, as patients are seldom quoted, very few articles offer help-seeking information, and a narrative of victimisation without appropriate discussion of resilience regularly occurs.

References
1.
Hildersley R, Potts L, Anderson C, Henderson C . Improvement for most, but not all: changes in newspaper coverage of mental illness from 2008 to 2019 in England. Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci. 2020; 29:e177. PMC: 7681112. DOI: 10.1017/S204579602000089X. View

2.
Shohel T, Nasrin N, Farjana F, Shovo T, Asha A, Heme M . 'He was a brilliant student but became mad like his grandfather': an exploratory investigation on the social perception and stigma against individuals living with mental health problems in Bangladesh. BMC Psychiatry. 2022; 22(1):702. PMC: 9662765. DOI: 10.1186/s12888-022-04359-3. View

3.
Aragones E, Lopez-Muntaner J, Ceruelo S, Basora J . Reinforcing stigmatization: coverage of mental illness in Spanish newspapers. J Health Commun. 2014; 19(11):1248-58. DOI: 10.1080/10810730.2013.872726. View

4.
Baeyens D, Moniquet A, Danckaerts M, Van der Oord S . [A comparative study of the structural stigmatisation of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder in Flemish newspapers]. Tijdschr Psychiatr. 2017; 59(5):269-277. View

5.
Whitley R, Adeponle A, Miller A . Comparing gendered and generic representations of mental illness in Canadian newspapers: an exploration of the chivalry hypothesis. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2014; 50(2):325-33. DOI: 10.1007/s00127-014-0902-4. View