Mediating Mental Health

Michael Birch lectures in the Department of English and Communications at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, USA

'Mike Birch has accomplished one of the most qualitatively rigorous studies of media representations of mental health that has ever been attempted. It embraces the perspectives of all major stake-holders, and yields profound and practical insights into mediated constructions of stigma.' Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University, USA 'Michael Birch's compelling work questions the mental health of a society, rather than that of those it defines as unhealthy. He demonstrates that modes of representation of mental health in Britain in particular, offer insights into the conventions underlying cultural practices and institutions. Drawing upon examples of ethnographic experiments derived from applied television and theatre practices, Birch shows masterfully that it is within representations as locations of power that "disability" is imagined, enforced, and contested.' Awam Amkpa, New York University, USA and author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires 'Mike Birch offers an extensive, academically robust and thought provoking analysis of mental health mediation. Historically and contextually situated, it is an excellent critical inquiry into the nature of these powerful and often negative discursive practices. The text would be a valuable resource to many readers, particularly for those interested in mental health, media studies, discourse analysis and policy development.' James Trueman, Anglia Ruskin University, UK '... offer[s] some provocative thinking and creative research on the effects of media messages on individual identities and public understanding... it rewards persistence and an open mind with alternative ways of thinking, conducting research, and listening to the people most directly affected by media images... Birch literally puts the groups with mental health conditions on center stage, enabling them to re-examine the media samples and act out their own alternatives and commentaries. Their clever and often comedic dramatizations are laden with u

• Introduction; 1: Mediating Mental Health; 2: Critical Contexts; 3: Historical Contexts for Popular Meanings of ‘Madness'; An Outline of the Case Studies; 4: Phase One, Genre Studies 1; 5: Phase One, Genre Studies 2; 6: Phase One, Genre Studies 3; 7: Phase Two, Part 1; 8: Phase Two, Part 2; 9: Conclusion