What is it about?
SANE Australia’s StigmaWatch program promotes responsible reporting of mental illness and suicide in the Australian media by contacting media professionals about portrayals that breach the Mindframe media guidelines. Overall, it aims to reduce stigma and other harms stemming from problematic media portrayals of suicide and mental illness. Using a log of StigmaWatch activity over 5 years (2017 - 2021), we conducted the first evaluation of the program's impact on media portrayals.
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Why is it important?
Media portrayals of suicide and mental illness that contain problematic and stigmatizing elements have a strong potential to result in harm, including suicide contagion and stigmatizing attitudes towards people with mental illness. Conversely, media portrayals of mental illness and suicide that are balanced, accurate and informative have been found to mitigate against stigma and other harms. The findings demonstrate the impact of StigmaWatch. This includes influencing modifications to almost half (44.3%) of the media portrayals that were reported and were in breach of media guidelines.
Perspectives
This is the first research to investigate the impact of StigmaWatch in the program's 25 years of working to address stigma in the media. The findings show that the efforts of everyone involved in the StigmaWatch program, including members of the public who report stigmatizing media content, have made a substantial difference to improve the quality of Australian media reporting on mental illness and suicide.
Dr Anna Ross
University of Melbourne
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluation of the StigmaWatch program’s impact on media portrayals of suicide and mental illness., Stigma and Health, January 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/sah0000437.
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