Biocommunicability and the politics of mental health: an analysis of responses to the ABC’s ‘Mental As’ media campaign

ABSTRACT

For the past 2 years during Mental Health Week in Australia, the ABC has dedicated a week of programming across all of its platforms to mental health issues. The ‘Mental As’ campaign has been widely praised for creating awareness and raising funds for mental health research, while also drawing some strong criticism. This article provides a thematic analysis of a selection of media and public responses to Mental As with particular attention to the following four themes: starting a national conversation; combating stigma; emphasising the political economy of mental health; and resisting restitution narratives. The analysis draws upon the concept of ‘biocommunicability’ to explore the links between people’s responses to the campaign and their uptake or resistance of the subject positions it invited them to adopt. The article seeks to offer some insight into the ways in which media and communication practices can figure in the biopolitics of mental health.

KEYWORDS:

• Biocommunicability
• media
• media criticism
• mental health
• mental illness

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Professor R. Warwick Blood for his feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript and Dr Michelle Dunne Breen for her research assistance. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The concept of ‘mental illness’ is contested and throughout the article, I use various terminology including mental distress and mental health issues.

2. Both the Crack Up nights made it into the top 10 highest rating programs on Australian TV on that date (OzTam). All funds raised went to the Society for Mental Health Research, whose President Professor Patrick McGorry was one of the people behind the Mental As initiative. Mental As is due to run again during Mental Health Week in October 2016.

3. This is a reference to Razer’s 1999 book, Gas Smells Awful.

4. Throughout the year, the ABC reports on the kinds of issues some thought did not receive enough attention during Mental As. Razer acknowledged this in her 2015 commentary but suggested the good work the ABC does throughout the year is trivialised by the ‘tears-and-triumph cycle of spin’ during Mental As.

5. As a postscript to this commentary Stewart explains that after writing it, she was contacted by the ABC and given the opportunity to share her experience on radio, including that it took her 13 years to get a diagnosis and 18 months from then to find the right combination of treatments. It is also interesting to note that an article published on the ABC website during Mental Health Week, ‘Mental As: Challenging the narrative that full recovery is realistic for all’, referenced Stewart’s article and discussed the importance of a diversity of narratives about experiences of mental distress (Cockburn, 2015). These can be seen as examples of listening on the part of the public broadcaster.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council: [Grant Number DE140100100].

Notes on contributors

Kate Holland

Kate Holland is a Senior Research Fellow in the News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra. Kate is currently the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for a project entitled ‘Mediating Mental Health: An Integrated Approach to Investigating Media and Social Actors’ (DE140100100). Kate has published qualitative research examining media and public understandings of mental health issues, suicide, overweight and obesity, and infectious diseases.