Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Chester, Castle Drive, Chester CH1 1SL, UK.
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Perspect Public Health. 2019 May;139(3):147-152. doi: 10.1177/1757913919835858.
Media representations of mental health problems may influence readers' understanding of, and attitude towards, people who have received psychiatric diagnoses. Negative beliefs and attitudes may then lead to discriminatory behaviour, which is understood as stigma. This study explored the language used in popular national newspapers when writing about schizophrenia and considered how this may have contributed to the processes of stigmatisation towards people with this diagnosis.
Using corpus linguistic methods, a sample of newspaper articles over a 24-month period that mentioned the word 'schizophrenia' was compared with a similar sample of articles about diabetes. This enabled a theory-driven exploration of linguistic characteristics to explore stigmatising messages, while supported by statistical tests (log-likelihood) to compare the data sets and identify words with a high relative frequency.
Analysis of the 'schizophrenia' data set identified that overtly stigmatising language (e.g. 'schizo') was relatively infrequent, but that there was frequent use of linguistic signatures of violence. Articles frequently used graphic language referring to acts of violence, descriptions of violent acts, implements used in violence, identity labels and exemplars of well-known individuals who had committed violent acts. The word 'schizophrenic' was used with a high frequency ( n = 108) and most commonly to name individuals who had committed acts of violence.
The study suggests that while the press has largely avoided the use of words that press guidance has steered them away from (e.g. 'schizo' and 'psycho'), they still use a range of graphic language to present people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia as frighteningly 'other' and as prone to violence. This repetition of negative stereotypical messages may well contribute to the processes of stigmatisation many people who experience psychosis have to contend with.
媒体对心理健康问题的描述可能会影响读者对接受精神科诊断的人的理解和态度。负面的信念和态度可能导致歧视行为，这被理解为污名化。本研究探讨了流行的全国性报纸在撰写精神分裂症时使用的语言，并考虑了这可能如何促成对患有这种诊断的人的污名化过程。
使用语料库语言学方法，对在 24 个月期间提到“精神分裂症”一词的报纸文章样本与关于糖尿病的类似文章样本进行了比较。这使得可以对语言特征进行理论驱动的探索，以探索污名化信息，同时通过统计检验（对数似然）来支持数据比较，并确定具有高相对频率的单词。
对“精神分裂症”数据集的分析表明，明显污名化的语言（例如“schizo”）相对较少，但经常使用暴力的语言特征。文章经常使用图形语言来指代暴力行为、描述暴力行为、用于暴力的工具、身份标签和实施暴力行为的知名人士的范例。“精神分裂症患者”一词的使用频率很高（n=108），最常见的是用于命名实施暴力行为的个人。
该研究表明，尽管媒体在很大程度上避免使用新闻指南引导他们避免使用的词语（例如“schizo”和“psycho”），但他们仍然使用各种图形语言将被诊断为精神分裂症的人描述为可怕的“异类”，并容易发生暴力行为。这种重复负面刻板印象信息很可能会导致许多经历精神病的人所面临的污名化过程。
