Representation of mental illness and disorders in Iberoamerica digital media

A recent bibliometric analysis of 130 research studies on media coverage of mental disorders between 2002 and 2022 found that, in most cases, research insists that media coverage of mental disorders is generally negative. The objective of this research is to examine the tone and content of articles on mental health in the main digital media in Ibero-America in 2023. Likewise, we sought to identify the most common types of disorders or emerging disorders and whether the news items establish very simplistic links of mental health with topics such as video games and social, financial, or gender issues. In this study, simplistic links were defined as media representations that establish direct and unsubstantiated causal relationships between mental health and a single external factor, such as social media use, video games, or certain social or gender conditions. For example, headlines that attribute depression exclusively to TikTok use or that associate anxiety solely with being female, without nuance or empirical support, were classified in this category. In contrast, approaches that acknowledge multiple causes or include expert perspectives were coded as complex or contextualized analyses. This distinction allowed for the identification of reductionist media narratives that reinforce stereotypes or oversimplify psychosocial phenomena.

The most important digital media in each Ibero-American country was selected, and articles published on mental health in 2023 were collected (n = 20,020). Subsequently, mixed analysis was performed using an analysis sheet of a representative sample of information units (n = 1226).

The majority representation of mental health was neutral in tone (56%), while a positive tone was evident in only 27% of the sample. Negative representation (17%) was generally linked to crime and substance abuse problems. The conditions with the highest frequency in the analyzed media were depression (n = 161), anxiety (n = 158), stress (n = 144), suicide (n = 88), substance addiction (n = 83), and neurocognitive disorders (n = 68). In 187 reports, simplistic links about disorders, especially the abuse of social networks and social issues, such as poverty or social exclusion, were found to emerge mainly in reports in which expert sources were contrasted.

The neutral representation of mental health in the media should not be considered a positive aspect, since a more proactive approach should be encouraged, focusing on the details of each situation without articulating homogeneous stories, which invites us to reflect on the formative and sensitizing role of the media, especially in a context marked by misinformation, digital noise, and the rapid growth of mental illness in the population.