Journalist with mental health issues calls for better reporting

 
By Rick Owen

Northern News

Kirkland Lake, Ontario




As both a reporter and a person who lives with mental health issues, including addiction, I have very strong opinions about how the media reports on mental health and addictions.

In recent years the media has improved its reporting in this area by covering major campaigns concerning mental health. It is also encouraging that media people and high profile people have gone public with their struggles with mental health.

On the other hand when a terrible event happens that involves a person with a mental health condition, I find the media generally does not do enough to explain the illness and how it can be treated, or to point out that the vast majority of people with the mental health condition who are getting the right treatment, live relatively normal - if not completely normal - lives.

I know that for many years my own impressions of various mental health conditions were formed from media reporting on tragic events. These impressions were dead wrong, because the other side of the story - people with the same condition getting treatment and recovering - was hardly ever told.

A number of people I consider friends today live with mental health conditions, such as bi-polar disorder, depression and schizophrenia and yet live productive lives. No not all are employed, but they do live on their own, have friends and are active in the community.

The media often refers to a person as though they were their mental health condition. That is so wrong. Their mental health issue is just part of them, it is not who they are. You would never refer to a person with cancer, as cancerous, so why is it that people with a mental illness are called by their mental illness? He is schizophrenic, she is bi-polar, they are addicts.

No we aren't. We live with illnesses, but as people we are so much more and many of us are very productive people, who live next door to you. By recognizing this, I believe the media could go a long way to reducing the stigma attached to people who live with a mental health condition.

As you noticed I use the words 'live with', and that is because when my mental health conditions are not active, I do live with them. I only suffer from them when they are active. Yes, I have made changes in my life to keep healthy, but that is no different than a person with a physical condition making changes in diet or lifestyle to stay well.

Again I believe this is an important point the media does not always make. If we did, I think it could also help reduce the stigma attached to mental health conditions.

For the past 31 years Rick Owen has worked as a photographer and then reporter at the Northern Daily News, now Northern News. He has won both spot news writing and spot news photography awards from Thomson Newspapers. He is a recovering alcoholic with just over five years sobriety, and lives with, and sometimes suffers from, depression. He is married and has three grown children.