Total deaths from suicide, alcohol, or drugs, what some call “deaths of despair,” increased by 51 percent from 2005 to 2016 in the United States, and drug overdose deaths increased by 16 percent per year between 2014 and 2017. These statistics reflect the well-documented opioid crisis and what some experts have called a national “mental […]
Media and Mental Illness in a Post-Truth Era
It has been argued convincingly that the public’s primary source of information about mental illness is the media: news, entertainment, and the echo chamber of social media. These depictions cue, frame, and otherwise guide our interpretive frameworks in both obvious and subtle ways. Visual media may be especially compelling and impactful in guiding social awareness, […]