The Challenge of Personality Disorders in Singapore
Personality disorders, with 9.8% of Singaporeans being diagnosed with it in 2010, is one of the major challenge faced by the healthcare sector in Singapore. That illustrates that Singapore is facing a crisis when it comes to mental health. Singaporeans have been suffering from personality disorders like schizoid, borderline, narcissistic, paranoid, obsessive compulsive disorders, and not having knowledge to handle these disorders are making the situation worse by the minute. Living in a fast paced society like Singapore, we tend to be reliant on the media, however, the print, broadcast, and electronic media has been derailing the war against personality disorders because they mislead the members of the public by propagating the culture of stigmatization.
Singaporeans have unrestricted access to the print, broadcast, and electronic media such as the television (TV), movies, radio, newspapers, journals, blogs, websites, and social media. These media platforms are essential as people are extremely dependent on them, these serve as a huge platform to gather information, education, resources, and even communicate efficiently, at the same time, media has also been a great part of entertainment for Singaporeans (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). Youths tends to be fond of social media platforms like the YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Over the years, Singaporeans have been using the media as a powerful tool to educate the public and communicate health-related matters.
Despite its significance in the healthcare sector, media has failed to positively contribute towards the war against mental ill-health. The mainstream media-TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and films have not been doing a commendable job as far as mental illnesses are concerned (Canvin, Rugkåsa, Sinclair & Burns, 2014). Although some media houses which have been helping in sensitizing the members of the public on matters related to mental illness, there are others which have been doing a disservice to it (Braithwaite & Schrodt, 2014). These media platforms have been giving a false impression of the people with mental illnesses like personality disorders.
The first way through which the mainstream media has been derailing the war against mental illness by depicting the condition inaccurately. Media have been releasing incorrect information on mental illnesses. Media have been blaming the mentally-ill for their problem with the assumption that they are responsible for it (Manuel & Crowe, 2014). The Hoarders would be an example of a TV series that misled people by providing the wrong information regarding hording disorder. These misconceptions renders the mentally-ill vulnerable in the society (Gerlinger, Hauser, Hert, Lacluyse, Wampers & Correll, 2013). They deliberately conceal the truth despite them knowing that such personality disorders are purely biological and have nothing to do with religious or cultural beliefs.
The Significance of Media in Singaporean Society
Another way media misrepresent personality disorder is by providing incorrect information regarding the management of their mental health conditions. For example, there are newspaper articles or radio programs portraying the mentally-ill as irresponsible people whom none should associate with (Rogers & Pilgrim, 2014). At the same time, there are instances where media portray person with personality disorder as violent with tendencies to attack and harm others. This is misleading and caused various prejudices against personality disorder. (Chang, Wu, Chen, Wang & Lin, 2014). Hence, Professional journalists should be responsible, they ought to be ethical and ensure they publish accurate contents as much as possible, this will refrain them from causing harm to people or families suffering from personality disorder.
In Singapore, people have become obsessed with the social sites like YouTube, Facebook, and twitter. These platforms are popular among Singaporeans especially the technology-savvy youths, communication, networking, enjoying pleasurable moments, and sharing information are a few notable functions of these platforms. (Pilgrim, 2017). These benefits acts as a double-edged sword as it becomes easy for people to share untrue information with ease. An example would be a Facebook users post pictures and writing defamatory comments against people who are mentally ill (Dew, Scott & Kirkman, 2016). Such defamatory information include the depiction of the patients as dirty, violent, and pariah people with whom should be avoided. Social media sites are often poorly regulated, resulting in users using images of others without restrictions. Thus, it would be quotidian for users to neglect the negative impact and harm they will be inflicting to the society due to their abuse of social media.
Videos will be another platform that are often misused, Singaporeans often watch videos online such as skits or parodies on YouTube created to illustrate or educated a specific issue on our society. While it is good to have these problems being addressed, certain films does a disservice to people with personality disorders without considering about the challenges they face, by being depicted negatively, people will prejudice about them and demotivate them to open up and seek medical help regarding their condition (Denecke, et al., 2015).
The first way through which the negative coverage of mental illness affects Singaporeans is that it encourages the culture of stigmatization of the people with personality disorders in the country. Once people realize the media condones and propagates stigmatization, they will have no choice but to join the band wagon thinking that stigmatization is an acceptable practice that harms no one. Public stigmatization is harmful to the mentally-ill persons because it can make life quite challenging for them. When everyone in the society blames the sick for their conditions, it might be hard for them to fit into the society because of a feeling of neglect and isolation. Such levels of stigmatization may even result into the deprivation of rights such as healthcare, employment and education (Denecke, et al., 2015). However, these are fundamental rights and opportunities that should be availed to everyone regardless of their health status. They should not be denied to anyone on the basis of their mental condition.
The Negative Impact of Media on Mental Health
The other way through which this practice affects mental illness is that it discourages people from seeking for mental care from the healthcare facilities within their respective areas of residence. The feeling of irresponsibility makes many people shy away from going for psychological evaluation, laboratory tests, and physical examination to find out if they might be having any personality illness-related symptoms. The people may fear such diagnoses thinking that if in any case they are diagnosed with any [personality disorder, they would be stigmatized, discriminated, and subjected to all manners of oppression in the midst of their people. Hence, in the long-run, it means that such media misrepresentations interfere with the general fight against mental illnesses in the country. Media can be destructive because it is a very influential tool that is trusted by nearly everyone in the country (Subramaniam, 2017). Meaning, anything that the media supports is viewed as true and should not be opposed no matter how destructive it might be.
Although having the above mentioned negative impacts on personality disorders caused by the media, there are certain aspects of media that accurately portray personality disorders. Susanna Kaysen from “Girl, Interrupted”, Pat Solitano from “Silver Linings Playbook, and even Anakin Skywalker from the renowned “Star Wars” have accurately depicted borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, such as meticulously showing fears of abandonment and loss, separation difficulties, intense passion and sensitive emotional responses, sensitivity to potential slights, impulsiveness, anger bursts, feelings of being lost, empty and extremely unsure about identity. (Juliette Virzi, 2017). This provides evidence that media, being an entertainment, can be educational at the same time, providing reliable depictions of personality disorders through the conscientious acting of the actor playing the role. This explains that media acts as an double edged sword to how personality disorders is being demonstrated by the media, while there might be incorrect and wrong stigmas being placed on people with personality disorders, this will also be a good channel to educated people.
Another favorable impacts of media on personality disorders would simply be the convenience that technologies have evolved tremendously over the years. Technology have made it extremely easy to promote awareness of issues that should be highlighted, with personality disorder being one of them. Rahim Kanami (2012) mentioned that “They also turned video views into action. Since the launch of It Gets Better, calls to the Trevor Project suicide hotline have increased over 50%. By the end of 2010, the It Gets Better Project had raised over $100,000 from 2,500+ grassroots contributors to help LGBT youth.” This clearly demonstrated that utilizing media have been an exceptionally efficacious way to spread awareness among the current technology dependent society. Having abundance of information available on the media online will further reinforce the virtuousness of the internet, with web search engine as vast as Google search, any accurate information on the web can be just a few clicks away from users. These benefits of media clearly illustrates that the ease and accessibility of the media will substantially increase the awareness of personality disorders in society where information on these mental illness would be easily publicize and retrieved online.
Misrepresentation of Personality Disorders in the Media
It is quite unfortunate that the media has been at the fore front of encouraging the culture of stigmatization. This is a bad practice that has been slowing the pace of the war against personality disorders in the nation. Media is a very influential platform whose misuse can have a massive negative impact on the people. It is a high time the government and people of Singapore comes up and takes the necessary measures to salvage the situation (Naslund, Grande, Aschbrenner & Elwyn, 2014). One of the ways through which this issue can be ultimately resolved is by coming up with a new policy framework to stringently regulate the usage of mainstream and social media in the country. The government should ensure that every media user abides by rules failure to which they should be prosecuted before a court of law. All media houses should ensure that any publication made is compliant with the legal and ethical standards in the country. Apart from this, the government, media houses, and other concerned stakeholders should educate the public on responsible ways of consuming the mainstream and social media. If all these are done, the cases of misuse, stigmatization, and inaccurate depiction of the mental health will be good for the people with mental illness.
References
Arnold, E.C. & Boggs, K.U. (2015). Interpersonal relationships: Professional communication skills for nurses. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Braithwaite, D.O. & Schrodt, P. eds. (2014). Engaging theories in interpersonal communication: Multiple perspectives. New York: Sage Publications.
Canvin, K., Rugkåsa, J., Sinclair, J. & Burns, T. (2014). Patient, psychiatrist and family carer experiences of community treatment orders: qualitative study. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 49(12), pp.1873-1882.
Chang, C. C., Wu, T. H., Chen, C. Y., Wang, J. D., & Lin, C. Y. (2014). Psychometric evaluation of the internalized stigma of mental illness scale for patients with mental illnesses: measurement invariance across time. PLoS One, 9(6), e98767.
Denecke, K., Bamidis, P., Bond, C., Gabarron, E., Househ, M., Lau, A.Y.S., Mayer, M.A., Merolli, M. & Hansen, M., 2015. Ethical issues of social media usage in healthcare. Yearbook of medical informatics, 10(1), p.137.
Dew, K., Scott, A. & Kirkman, A., (2016). Health and the Mass Media. In Social, Political and Cultural Dimensions of Health (pp. 233-244). Cham: Springer, Cham.
Gerlinger, G., Hauser, M., Hert, M., Lacluyse, K., Wampers, M., & Correll, C. U. (2013). Personal stigma in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a systematic review of prevalence rates, correlates, impact and interventions. World Psychiatry, 12(2), 155-164.
Juliette Virzi. (2017). Borderline personality disorder. 6 Movies That Got Borderline PersonalityDisorder Symptoms (Mostly) Right. Retrieved from https://themighty.com/2017/11/movies-borderline-personality-disorder-bpd/
Manuel, J., & Crowe, M. (2014). Clinical responsibility, accountability, and risk aversion in mental health nursing: A descriptive, qualitative study. International journal of mental health nursing, 23(4), 336-343.
Naslund, J. A., Grande, S. W., Aschbrenner, K. A., & Elwyn, G. (2014). Naturally occurring peer support through social media: the experiences of individuals with severe mental illness using YouTube. PLOS one, 9(10), e110171.
Pilgrim, D. (2017). Key concepts in mental health. Sage.
Rahim Kanami. (2012). Leadership. Why YouTube Is the Ultimate Platform for Global Social Change. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/rahimkanani/2012/06/04/why-youtube-is-the-ultimate-platform-for-global-social-change/#61f46b805501
Rogers, A. & Pilgrim, D. (2014). A sociology of mental health and illness. London: McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
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