Evaluating Media Coverage of Psychological Disorders (Auto-Feedback)
The news media sometimes report on psychological disorders accurately. Other times the media may report about psychological disorders in ways that may underemphasize biological influences or reinforce cultural myths.
Locate a media report on a psychological disorder and evaluate the quality of the media coverage. In your answer, compare and contrast the article’s description of the disorder with psychology’s official definition, on areas such as symptoms, duration or course. Then, describe to what extent the reporter underemphasized biological influences or reinforced cultural myths.
To help ensure the auto-feedback system will function properly, your response must contain a minimum of 100 words and a maximum of 1000 words, though individual prompts or your instructor may provide a more precise target range for word count. Your response will be automatically reviewed by the system, and you will receive your grade after your instructor reviews and returns the scores. Your response should not contain in-text parenthetical citations or other special headers or formatting.
Sample Solution
An example of a media report on a psychological disorder is an article from Fox News titled “Bipolar Disorder: Symptoms, Treatment, Causes and Tests” (Hafeez & Stolman, 2019). The article provides basic information about bipolar disorder such as its symptoms, diagnosis criteria, potential treatments and prevention strategies. The article also provides valuable information about the causes of bipolar disorder which include genetic components, biological factors such as hormone levels or brain chemistry and environmental stressors.
When compared to psychology’s official definition of bipolar disorder provided by the American Psychiatric Association (2013), the media coverage does not provide sufficient detail about the time duration for reaching a diagnostic conclusion or course of illness. The DSM-5 defines bipolar disorder as having alternating episodes of mania and depression that last at least 7 days each. However, this criterion is not mentioned in the news coverage. Furthermore, when discussing treatment strategies for managing symptoms associated with bipolar disorder there is no mention of psychotherapy or cognitive behavior therapy which are commonly recommended approaches used by mental health professionals to treat this condition effectively (APA 2013).
Overall, while some aspects of psychological disorders were accurately reported in this news article it did under emphasize biological influences when omitting details related to course duration or recommended treatment approaches endorsed by mental health professionals. Additionally reinforcing cultural myths could be seen in terms of suggesting medications alone can be enough to help people manage their symptoms instead addressing underlying causes associated with environmental stressors such as poverty or homelessness that may exacerbate cases of this condition over time.
