Attitudes towards schizophrenia on YouTube: A content analysis of Finnish and Greek videos

Abstract

Objective: To investigate attitudes towards schizophrenia and people with schizophrenia presented in YouTube videos.

Methods: We searched YouTube using the search terms “schizophrenia” and “psychosis” in Finnish and Greek language on April 3rd, 2013. The first 20 videos from each search (N = 80) were retrieved. Deductive content analysis was first applied for coding and data interpretation and it was followed by descriptive statistical analysis.

Results: A total of 52 videos were analyzed (65%). The majority of the videos were in the “Music” category (50%, n = 26). Most of the videos (83%, n = 43) tended to present schizophrenia in a negative way, while less than a fifth (17%, n = 9) presented schizophrenia in a positive or neutral way. Specifically, the most common negative attitude towards schizophrenia was dangerousness (29%, n = 15), while the most often identified positive attitude was objective, medically appropriate beliefs (21%, n = 11). All attitudes identified were similarly present in the Finnish and Greek videos, without any statistically significant difference.

Conclusions: Negative presentations of schizophrenia are most likely to be accessed when searching YouTube for schizophrenia in Finnish and Greek language. More research is needed to investigate to what extent, if any, YouTube viewers’ attitudes are affected by the videos they watch.

• Online videos
• YouTube
• social media
• mental disorders
• content analysis

Declaration of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest.

FUNDING

This research was supported by the University of Turku Graduate School – UTUGS, TEKES – Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Academy of Finland (132581), and the Horizontal Act project, funded by the European Union (European Social Fund-ESF) and the Public Investment Program (2011-2-162; IKY, Greece). The funding sources had no involvement in the study.

Supplementary Materials

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