title: People see what papers show! Psychiatry's stint with print media: A pilot study from Mumbai, India.
abstract: Mass media including television, internet, and newspapers influences public views about various issues by means of how it covers an issue. Newspapers have a wider reach and may affect the impact that a news story has on the reader by factors such as placement of the story within the different pages. We did a pilot study to see how two English newspapers from Mumbai, India were covering psychiatry related news stories. The study was done over a period of 3 months. We found a total of 870 psychiatry related news stories in the two newspapers over 3 months with the majority of them being covered in the main body of the newspapers. Sex-related crime stories and/or sexual dysfunction stories received the highest coverage among all the news while treatment and/or recovery related stories received very little coverage. It is crucial that the print media takes more efforts in improving reporting of psychiatry-related stories and help in de-stigmatizing psychiatry as a discipline.
authors.affiliation: Psychiatry Residency Training Program, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey, USA.
authors.forename: Shivanshu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shrivastava
authors.affiliation: Psychiatrist, Flynn High Dependency Unit, La Trobe Regional Hospital (LRH), LRH Mental Health Services, Traralgon, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Gurvinder
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kalra
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, MGM Medical College and Hospital, MGM University of Health Sciences, New Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
authors.forename: Shaunak
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ajinkya
keywords: India; mental illness; newspapers; print media; psychiatry
references.citation: Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 1999 Aug;33(4):583-9
references.pmid: 10483855
references.citation: J Ark Med Soc. 2004 Apr;100(10):366-7
references.pmid: 15080279
references.citation: Int J Law Psychiatry. 2001 Jul-Oct;24(4-5):469-86
references.pmid: 11521421
references.citation: Aust N Z J Ment Health Nurs. 1997 Jun;6(2):73-89
references.pmid: 9256656
references.citation: Lancet. 1998 Sep 26;352(9133):1053
references.pmid: 9759768
references.citation: Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2001 Oct;35(5):654-9
references.pmid: 11551282
references.citation: Psychiatr Serv. 2012 Jul;63(7):655-9
references.pmid: 22555313
references.citation: Am J Psychiatry. 1996 Aug;153(8):1001-8
references.pmid: 8678167
references.citation: Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2006 Apr;41(4):318-22
references.pmid: 16424966
references.citation: MedGenMed. 2004 Sep 27;6(3):49
references.pmid: 15520673
references.citation: Indian J Psychiatry. 1998 Apr;40(2):149-57
references.pmid: 21494462