Portrayals Of Schizophrenia By Entertainment Media Assignment

Portrayals Of Schizophrenia By Entertainment Media Assignment

Content Analysis

Question One: Owen’s Research Question and Motivation behind It

Though not indicated, Owen’s article’s research question focuses on how entertainment media portrays Schizophrenia and can be identified from the article’s main topic. The main motivation, as Owen (2012, p.655) illustrates, concerns the belief that entertainment media portrays Schizophrenia using stereotypes, thus misinforming the public concerning the mental illness’s treatment, causes, and symptoms. The reason for such negative beliefs against the entertainment media, more so the movies, is that these mediums should aim at providing more light on mental illness. However, most critics believe that movies have used their platform to indicate inaccurate and stereotypic mental illness depictions. An example that is provided regards movies presenting schizophrenia patients as violent and dangerous, like the movie “Homicidal Maniac,” which uses stereotypes of mental illness patients Portrayals Of Schizophrenia By Entertainment Media Assignment.

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Question Two: Sample, Databases, and Search Terms Used

Owen (2012) engaged its sample with English-language commercial movies. These movies had to have featured one or more schizophrenic characters. Also, these samples had to be within a range between 1990 to 2010 on their theatrical show release (Owen, 2012, p.656).

The researcher used print movie and internet databases that enabled the research team to search movies using keywords and topics (Owen, 2012, p.656). Hence, these movie databases included the Turner classic movies, Internet movie databases, Yahoo! movies, VideoHound Movie Guide, Time Out Film Guide, and Netflix.

Search terms were based on keywords like mental illness, Schizophrenia, mental problems, psychiatric problems, psychiatric illness, psychological problems, psychological illnesses, insanity, psychosis, hallucinations, crazy, delusional, and delusions (Owen, 2012, p.656).

Question 3: Researcher Variables for Data Coding

Owen (2012) carried out a  variable coding checklist to ensure that every movie character met the schizophrenia selection criteria. Hence, the researcher characterized these variables in various categories, which include;

Demographic Characteristics

In this category, the main factors considered concerning the character included socioeconomic  basing it on the character’s residence, status, age range estimates, ethnicity, and gender (Owen, 2012, p.656)

Stereotypes and Symptoms

The main factors considered include the negative symptoms like flat affect, avolition, and alogia and positive symptoms like disorganized speech and behavior, hallucinations, and bizarre delusions. All these symptoms had to follow the Schizophrenia’s DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria (Owen, 2012, p.656).

Causation

The researcher had to evaluate if the movie’s characters’ schizophrenia causation was directly implied or stated. Such information would then be coded as either primarily biological or environmental cause or both factors. A biological cause would be like having a schizophrenic parent with an environmental cause being traumatic events (Owen, 2012, p. 657)Portrayals Of Schizophrenia By Entertainment Media Assignment.

Treatment

The coding criteria for treatment were based on psychological factors like psychotherapy and biological factors like medication or inclusion of both treatment interventions (Owen, 2012, p. 657).

Question 4: Author’s Conclusion Regarding the Study’s Results

The author concludes that critics have concentrated more on criticizing contemporary movies’ ways of portraying Schizophrenia in terms of stereotyping and misinformation. However, such criticism underscores the essentiality of identifying how viewers interpret messages from entertainment media and how such interpretations influence these viewers’ beliefs and attitudes, especially for schizophrenic individuals and the general public (Owen, 2012, p. 658-659).

Question 5: Owen’s Article Reflection

Owen’s study is trustworthy, as it is found in most scholarly databases like Pubmed, Elsevier, and Google Scholar. The dependability aspect can be seen through the researcher’s study conceptualization of research topic, data collection procedures, findings interpretation, and reporting results. Confirmability has been expressed through the researcher acknowledging individuals that helped in movie viewing and coding, with the research transferability being seen through the researcher identifying areas that future research should focus on for more elaboration. As Owen (2012, p.658) postulates, the main study limitation was using only commercial movies made purposely for theatrical release. Hence, the researcher excluding other visual media that touches on Schizophrenia may have limited the researcher’s findings.

Reference

Owen, P. R. (2012). Portrayals of Schizophrenia by entertainment media: a content analysis of contemporary movies. Psychiatric Services, 63(7), 655-659. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201100371

Content analysis

 

Part 1. Read the following article: Owen PR. Portrayals of schizophrenia by entertainment media: a content analysis of contemporary movies. Psychiatry Serv. 2012;63(7):655-659

 

Briefly answer the following questions:

 

Leave these questions on the sheet and type your answers below each question.

 

Submit as a Microsoft Word file.   

 

1. What is the research question, and the motivation behind the research question (why did the author want to answer it)?

 

1. How was the sample defined? Which databases were used for the search? Which search terms were used?

 

1. List the variables the researcher used to code the data and include 1-2 examples of specific codes under each category.

 

1. What is the author’s main conclusion based on the study results?

 

1. In your opinion, how trustworthy are the results of this study? Which aspects of the design contribute to its trustworthiness (credibility, dependability, confirmability, and/or transferability)? For full credit, you need to briefly (but carefully) justify your answer by providing details from the study to demonstrate how any of these aspects are met in terms of their definitions. Lastly, what are some of the study’s limitations in terms of at least one of these aspects? Please follow the same previous instructions Portrayals Of Schizophrenia By Entertainment Media Assignment.