Washington State Coalition to Improve Mental Health Reporting
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing competition.
Summary:
Violence is the predominant frame of mental illness in the news leading to inaccurate public perceptions, stigma and discrimination . The idea is to develop a coalition of community news informants to educate and pitch alternative stories of hope, prevention, and recovery to journalists.
Section 1: About You
First Name
Jennifer
Last Name
Stuber
Website URL
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
University of Washington School of Social Work
Organization Website
Organization Phone
Organization Address
4101 15th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Organization Country
United States
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Your idea
Name Your Project
Washington State Coalition to Improve Mental Health Reporting
Country your work focuses on
United States
Describe Your Idea
Violence is the predominant frame of mental illness in the news leading to inaccurate public perceptions, stigma and discrimination . The idea is to develop a coalition of community news informants to educate and pitch alternative stories of hope, prevention, and recovery to journalists.
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Since the civil rights era, reporting practices have encouraged journalists to avoid stereotypical language and images when referring to racial and ethnic minorities and to people with physical disabilities. There is no such guidance when reporting includes a person with mental illness.
We developed reporting practices based on a content analysis of local news coverage and are actively seeking to implement them in targeted news organizations across the State of Washington. We are currently training community-based news informants (mental health professionals, individuals living with mental illness, family members and first responders) on these reporting practices and on how to engage with local news media. There is frequent contact between news informants and local journalists about the newly developed reporting practices and about alternative stories of prevention, treatment and recovery from mental health challenges. Coalition members meet with journalists in newsrooms, monitor and respond to news media in a constructive manner, and help identify for journalist’s news stories. We are planning to evaluate possible changes in news coverage using content analysis.
Other initiatives have devised guidelines for reporting to prevent stigma of mental illnesses (such as Wisconsin United’s Open Minds Open Doors campaign). These guides, while a great start, do not offer specific suggestions on how to improve reporting when news stories do involve a person with mental illness involved in a violent act. We also are unaware of other initiatives that seek to implement reporting practices actively with news media and to evaluate such efforts.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
The media guidelines were completed and disseminated to local journalists and news organizations in early 2009.
The project entered an active phase on May 1, 2009. A website for the project was developed www.mentalhealthreporting.org that contains the guidelines as well as information on mental health/ illness. The website provides a geographical map of Washington State to help journalists identify community-based news informants and a place for news informants to get help in pitching a prevention, treatment or recovery story.
A six hour training curriculum with presentations (on inaccuracies and stigmatizing portrayals of mental illness in the news and model language to engage journalists) and workshops (on writing letters to the editor, op-ed pieces and pitching recovery stories) was developed and is currently being implemented. We have completed 4 trainings of news informants in Vancouver, Burien, Wenatchee, and Spokane in Washington (130 individuals). Four additional trainings remain in Yakima, Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett. Local journalists are invited to each training to participate on a panel where they discuss challenges they face in reporting on mental illness and topics for news stories of potential interest to them. The trainings provide a networking opportunity for news informants and journalists.
Five news stories, 1 radio story, 6 op-eds and 6 letters to the editor authored by news informants have resulted to date. These pieces are catalogued on the website under “Exemplary Reporting and Opinion Pieces” in WA State.
Community-based news informants have met with journalists and editors at four news organizations. Meetings at 4 other news organizations are in the works.
Problem
The WA State Coalition to Improve Mental Health Reporting is seeking to improve accuracy of reporting on mental health and illness because inaccurate reporting contributes to stigma and discrimination experienced by millions of Americans living with mental illness. Stigma has been shown to have numerous deleterious consequences. Its importance lies in its adverse effects on self-esteem, social networks, employment, housing, quality of life, treatment seeking, treatment adherence, and deeply felt emotions of shame and embarrassment. Stigma is the co-occurrence of labeling, stereotyping, separation, status loss and discrimination in a situation where power is exercised. One of the root causes of mental illness stigma is believed to be the news media’s disproportionate coverage of individuals with mental illness involved in violent acts and the media’s use of dehumanizing language (e.g., the schizophrenic) as opposed to other news stories where people with mental illness are treated successfully and are leading fulfilling lives.
Actions
A former journalist is helping lead the coalition. She is an essential sounding board in terms of understanding the values and practices of journalists and the changing dynamics of news coverage in terms of the consolidation/ reduction of news organizations and the growth of new media. Faculty at the Communications Department at the University of Washington and the Edward R. Murrow College of Communications at Washington State University provide strategic advice lending credibility with local journalists.
Local journalists are engaged in a two-way discussion about how to improve news reporting. In trainings with news informants, we emphasize the importance of praise for balanced and accurate reporting as much as we do the specific inaccuracies they can identify and comment on in news coverage.
Local community organizations (e.g., Local Chapters of the National Alliance for Mental Illness) and individuals with mental illnesses help plan and implement the trainings assuring high rates of attendance, enthusiasm and story ideas generated within each community.
Results
The expected short-term results of the actions include: 1) increased adherence to mental health reporting guidelines by local journalists in the targeted news organizations as determined by a content analysis of news coverage before and after the commencement of the active phase of the project; 2) increased awareness of inaccuracies in news reporting among community based news informants as measured by a pre/ post survey administered during the trainings; 3) increased engagement of community-based news informants with targeted news organizations following the trainings resulting in an increase in the number of opinion pieces and news stories with a recovery or treatment efficacy focus.
Potential long-term results may include dissemination of reporting guidelines and active engagement with broadcast and radio news outlets in Washington State and improved public attitudes about mental illness in Washington State due to more informed news reporting. There is also the desire to expand the project to other states and communities and, to work with organizations such as the Poynter Institute (a think tank for journalism training and ethics) to approach these issues systemically.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
Year 1: The project is focused on Washington State because it is funded by a Mental Health Transformation Grant awarded to the State by the Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration. The activities outlined under item 7 are part of the project’s formative/ pilot stage. It is important to focus this work in a targeted fashion on specified news organizations and communities to build social networks between journalists and community based news informants as this is essential to their engaging in the genuine dialogue needed to change reporting practices and to generating interest in stories about mental health. As Transformation Grant funding is no longer available to the state of Washington as of September 2010, we are seeking alternative sources of funding to expand the effort in future years.
Year 2: We hope to pilot the effort to targeted radio and broadcast news organizations in Washington State and begin to offer technical assistance to other states and communities who want to undertake a similar effort. It would be especially desirable to identify communities nationwide who are interested in the program who would be willing to be randomized to the program or to serve as a control community so that the impact of the program on news coverage could be reliably assessed. In year 2, our focus will be to develop these community collaborations nationally and to devise the evaluation component.
Year 3: We hope to expand the scope of this project nationally to other communities and to begin to assess its impact on reporting practices and public attitudes.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
The social networks built between journalists and community-based news informants during the formative phase of this project is a sustainable way to improve mental health reporting in the State of Washington, but it is really just scratching the surface of a much larger need for improved reporting on mental health nationally and globally. To expand this effort to broadcast and radio and to assist other states and communities who wish to mount a comparable project, new funding is needed.
The importance of this being a local community-based effort cannot be emphasized enough. All news is local and local journalists are interested in story ideas that are authentically conveyed by members of the community. This project will only get so far if the focus is on dissemination of reporting guidelines absent genuine community collaboration. The community based news informants are the one's who can sustain and make connections to local journalists to place news stories of hope, prevention, treatment and recovery.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for less than a year
In what country?
United States
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
University of Washington School of Social Work
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
The Washington State Coalition to Improve Mental Health Reporting partners with local community-based organizations, local and state governments in Washington State. These partnerships have been important to the success of the effort to date. The community-based organizations have helped galvanize the communities targeted for the programs and with the implementation of the trainings. Local and state government has lent expertise in media relations and granted access to journalists to potential news stories. For example, the Seattle Times is in the process of publishing a news story on a drama therapy program at Western State Hospital, a public psychiatric facility that serves criminal offenders with mental illness. To grant the journalist access to this program, partnership with the State Department of Health and Human Services was needed, as they had to get the necessary permissions for patients to participate in the news gathering and interviews with the journalist.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
1. New funding
2. New communities who want to implement the program
3. Growing connections with organizations and institutions that train journalists
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
In October 2008, a colleague of mine in recovery from bipolar disorder had the courage to step forward and tell her recovery story to a journalist at the Seattle Post Intelligencier. http://www.seattlepi.com/health/385547_stephanie30.html
Her story was published on the front page with the uncommon headline, “The Story of Mental Illness and Recovery is Still Being Told”. This was a story I encouraged her to pitch to a journalist at the paper with a well-known interest in mental health. I realized, from reading her story, that if individuals living with mental illness and the organizations that treat them could break the silence that surrounds mental illness, the stigma of mental illness can be refuted allowing a more accurate picture of mental illness to come through. This more accurate, hopeful picture as opposed to the hopeless face of mental illness typically presented in news reporting where a person with mental illness is involved in a violent crime, can alter the reality of stigma and discrimination experienced by millions of Americans with mental illness. A more accurate picture of mental illness can help to break down barriers to treatment.
Most of the journalists we have encountered with this project seem to want to get the facts right. Journalists with their trade have the ability to impact the perceptions of others. In my frequent conversations with journalists they are surprised by facts like, mental illness alone is not a trigger for violence and, that most people, even those with the most serious forms of mental illness, recover and go on to live meaningful, productive lives. For the journalists we have helped to provide access to news stories of people in recovery, the opportunity to write the news story has been transformative for them personally, and they say, for their reporting practices in the future.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Jennifer Stuber is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. Her research if focused on the production, experiences of, and the implications of social marginalization (stigma and prejudice). She has explored these issues for those who use means-tested government programs, tobacco, and for people with mental illness. Stuber was the lead editor of a Special Issue of Social Science and Medicine on Stigma, Prejudice, Discrimination and Health. She leads a project in Washington State focused on training community stakeholders to refute stigmatizing portrayals of mental illness in the news. Stuber received her PhD from Yale University’s School of Public Health and she completed a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Fellowship at Columbia University.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | Robert Ratner added this idea to their favorites. - 233 days ago. |
 | Naveen Shakir said: On November 20, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing ... about this idea. - 233 days ago read more > |
| Sarah Poff added this idea to their favorites. - 238 days ago. |
| Sarah Poff added this idea to their favorites. - 238 days ago. |
| Sarah Poff added this idea to their favorites. - 238 days ago. |
| Paul Sureshkumar Samuel added this idea to their favorites. - 245 days ago. |
 | Washington State Coalition to Improve Mental Health Reporting has been chosen as a finalist in Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing. - 246 days ago |
 | Patricia Breuer Moreno updated this idea. - 285 days ago. |
| Jennifer Stuber updated this idea. - 288 days ago. |
 | Jennifer Stuber submitted this idea. - 357 days ago |
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