The Portrayal of Depression in Magazines Designed for Men (2000-2007)

Between medicalisation and normalisation: Antithetical representations of depression in the Greek-Cypriot press in times of financial crisis

Media offer people ways of understanding mental health and illness, shaping their attitudes and behaviour towards it. Yet, the literature on media representations of depression is limited and fails to illuminate sufficiently the content of representations. In times of financial crisis, the prevalence of depression is increased and the particular meanings associated with depression are widely diffused. To unpack these meanings, we focused on the Greek-Cypriot press during the financial crisis of 2013. Two-hundred and three articles from seven widely circulating newspapers were thematically analysed. Two antithetical themes of representations of depression were identified: Biomedical Depression, which constructed depression as a biologically grounded illness treated through medical/pharmaceutical means, and Everyday Depression, which portrayed depression as something normal, encountered in anyone, attributed to psychosocial factors (e.g. the financial crisis), and treated through self-management. Biomedical Depression reflects a widespread medical and deterministic understanding of depression. Nevertheless, this understanding has not overridden, as the literature suggests, references to individual agency, which are present in the Everyday Depression and the more normalising understanding of depression it expresses. We argue, however, that both themes promote an individualistic understanding of depression, placing individuals in a tense position of being responsible for a condition perceived to be outside their control.

The portrayal of mental health in Australian daily newspapers

OBJECTIVE

To examine how mental health is portrayed as a holistic construct in three major Australian daily newspapers.

METHODS

Using an unobtrusive, mixed methods approach incorporating content and thematic analyses, data were collected from hard copies of The Age, The Australian and Herald Sun newspapers and their weekend counterparts over 12 weeks in 2012.

RESULTS

Newspaper coverage of mental health favoured stories about illness over wellbeing. While the issue was typically reported responsibly, psychotic disorders were overrepresented in discussions of illness and were often discussed in relation to deviance.

CONCLUSIONS

Our analysis suggested that positive mental health messages are commonly presented, particularly in tabloid coverage, which appears to place greater emphasis on wellbeing. However, improvements in the representation of psychotic disorders appear to be less progressive than other disorders. This suggests mental health professionals and organisations need to continue building relationships with and providing education to journalists to ensure responsible representations continue to dominate.

IMPLICATIONS

This study provides an updated and holistic examination of the media's portrayal of mental health within the Australian context. As this is the first study to examine the portrayal of wellbeing and illness, it may provide insight into how media representations of mental health affect society beyond those affected by illness.

Canadian Men's Self-Management of Chronic Diseases: A Literature Analysis of Strategies for Dealing With Risks and Promoting Wellness

This article reviews the qualitative research on men's self-management of mental and physical chronic diseases, with emphasis on strategies for dealing with risks and promoting wellness. Using Bardin's method of document analysis, it was focused on the findings of Canadian qualitative studies published in French or English from 2005 to 2011. Boltanski's theory on social uses of the body inspired the analysis. Living with a chronic disease threatens men's sense of masculinity and self-image, as well as their perceived ability to fulfill expected social roles. Social images of men's bodies influence how men express their emotions, attributes, and attitudes, or acknowledge the need for and seek social affirmation. Self-management has been documented in Canadian qualitative literature as a complex phenomenon influenced by the social environment, personal capacities, feelings, perceptions, and potentials. The extent of how all these features interact within the scope of men's mental and physical health and illness experiences was partially revealed in this study. The findings underscore the social invisibility of men's bodies, especially those of men facing social inequities. Attending to principles of social justice can ensure that future research on men's health will amplify the range of men's voices and allow them to be heard. Recommendations address also the international scientific community interested in advancing men's health research, especially in those countries that lack a national men's health policy.

"We've got to break down the shame": portrayals of men's depression

News articles play a role in reproducing or challenging stigma. Stigma, in turn, can be a barrier to men's mental health help seeking. We used discursive analytic principles to analyze portrayals of men's communication about depression in news articles over a 5-year period. We found that news articles depicted men who were open about depression as experiencing positive outcomes such as recovery. Such depictions might challenge stigma associated with talking about mental health concerns. However, some articles problematically positioned depressed men as individually responsible for defying stigma and achieving recovery. We suggest that portraying depression as something that impacts a plurality of men is one way that media messages might dispel stigma. We drew recommendations from the findings about the language that could be used by media, mental health campaigns, and health service providers to mitigate the impact of stigma on men's mental health help seeking.