Stark C, Paterson B, Devlin B
Consultant in Public Health, Highland NHS Board Assynt House, Inverness and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs. 2004 Dec;11(6):635-43. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2850.2004.00743.x.
The media is an important source of public information on mental ill-health. A man with a serious psychiatric illness attacked a minister with a knife at a Remembrance Sunday service in a remote, rural part of the Highlands, inflicting a severe facial wound. We aimed to identify lessons for the National Health Service (NHS) from the media coverage of the incident and of a subsequent court case and NHS Highland inquiry and in addition to explore how newspaper reporters approached reporting such incidents. We searched local and regional, national Scottish, and the Scottish editions of three UK newspapers for relevant coverage. We also conducted structured telephone interviews with eight reporters who had attended the inquiry press conference. Most of the media coverage was associated with the assault and the court case, rather than the inquiry results. Only three of 10 inquiry recommendations were mentioned in any reports. Coverage largely dealt with identified shortfalls, rather than proposed solutions. The NHS had made little comment in advance of the announcement of the inquiry results. Most of the newspaper coverage had already occurred. The NHS therefore limited its opportunity to influence newspaper coverage. The interpretation of the results is limited by the size of the study, but the coverage of such events forms part of the discourse on mental health in the media episodes and may have some affect on public perception of mental health issues. We conclude that, without providing confidential information, the NHS should take a more active stance in providing information on the nature and treatment of mental illness in such instances, even in advance of court cases.
媒体是公众获取精神疾病相关信息的重要来源。一名患有严重精神疾病的男子在高地偏远农村地区的一次阵亡将士纪念日仪式上持刀袭击了一名部长，致使其面部受重伤。我们旨在从媒体对该事件、随后的法庭案件以及高地国民保健服务局（NHS）调查的报道中总结经验教训，此外还探究报纸记者报道此类事件的方式。我们在当地和地区性、苏格兰全国性以及三家英国报纸的苏格兰版中搜索相关报道。我们还对八名出席调查新闻发布会的记者进行了结构化电话访谈。大多数媒体报道都与袭击事件和法庭案件有关，而非调查结果。在所有报道中，10项调查建议中仅有3项被提及。报道主要关注已发现的不足之处，而非提出的解决方案。在调查结果公布之前，NHS几乎未发表任何评论。大多数报纸报道已经刊出。因此，NHS影响报纸报道的机会有限。本研究规模限制了对结果的解读，但此类事件的报道是媒体关于心理健康议题论述的一部分，可能会对公众对心理健康问题的认知产生一定影响。我们得出结论，在不提供机密信息的情况下，即使在法庭案件之前，NHS在提供此类事件中精神疾病的性质和治疗信息方面也应采取更积极的立场。
