Newspaper coverage of mental illness in Hong Kong between 2002 and 2012: the impact of introduction of new Chinese name of psychosis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Public stigma has a significant impact on the outcomes of patients with psychosis and their social integration into the community. Labels have been shown to be related to public stigma. In this light, countries have gradually introduced a less stigmatising label for schizophrenia patients. In Hong Kong, ‘Si-jue-shi-tiao’ (思覺 失調) denoting psychosis was introduced in 2001, providing an alternative term to the older term ‘Jing-shen-fen-lie’ (精 神分裂) which denotes schizophrenia. This study aimed to examine its use in newspaper articles after its introduction at 5 time-points: 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2012. METHODS: Newspaper articles (n = 1217) were chosen from 3 local newspapers. Use of the 2 labels were counted, and classified into 2 sets of themes. The first set of themes includes positive / neutral, negative, and irrelevant. The second set of themes was the use of dangerous or non-dangerous wordings in a stereotyping manner. RESULTS: Results showed an increase use of the new term ‘Si-jue-shi-tiao’ (思覺失調) in comparison to the older term ‘Jing-shen-fen-lie’ (精神分裂). The new term was used equally in positive / neutral, negative and irrelevant themes, whereas the older term was decreasingly used in positive / neutral themes but remained its presence in negatively themed articles. Findings also indicated higher use of the older term as dangerous wordings in a stereotyping context. CONCLUSION: Results suggested a good penetration of new term in the media and shift of association with new term more with positive image and old term with negative image. Results provide a positive preliminary evaluation of introducing new terms of psychosis.