Moral Panic on Mental Illness

Paper Summary:

Moral panic is a grossly exaggerated and widely shared fear in society of a newly discovered threat from an old form of deviance. This paper examines how the deviant persons or out-of-the-norm phenomena made as objects of this fear have been around for a long time and how they are brought to the attention of society and media only by an incident or two that had the effect of a sudden eruption.
Outline
Theories on Moral Panic
The Role of Media
Mental Illness and Media
Attitudes Reinforced by Media
Social Control

From the Paper:

"A subject that effectively demonstrates how mass media - newspapers, radio, television and films - promotes negative images and stereotypes is mental illness. So powerful are media representations of this problem that they can override people's own personal experiences in relation to how they view mental illness. Edney, D. (2004) Thus, even if people know from experience that a village idiot with a certain type of mental illness appears harmless, media influences them to regard the idiot as a potential threat."

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