Olympia -- A free training called "How the Media Can Influence Public Perceptions of Mental Illnesses and What You Can Do About It" is scheduled for July 14 in Vancouver, WA, at the Clark County Center for Community Health.

The workshop will offer journalists, mental health professionals and people living with or recovered from mental illness, ideas on how they can become better informed about how the media treats mental illness in the news. They also will learn how to be reliable news sources and use their expertise and firsthand experience to support accurate news reporting.

Conducted by the University of Washington School of Social Work with funding provided by the Mental Health Transformation Project, the Vancouver training will be the first of eight trainings to be held across Washington State. Other trainings will be held on September 24th in Burien and September 30th in Wenatchee during 2009. Next year, trainings are being planned around Spokane, Yakima, Tri Cities, North Seattle/Everett and Tacoma/Olympia.

"The disconnect between reality and what is being reported seems to stem from a number of things, including space issues and a lack of good resources for reporters to rely on locally," says Jennifer Stuber, PhD, associate professor at the UW School of Social Work who recently conducted a study analyzing news content from Washington state newspapers over the past ten years. According to the study, news reports often described multi-faceted people in one-dimentional ways with a strong link to their illness rather than any other characteristic.

"Language does matter. We don't walk around calling someone "the cancer," but for some reason we have no problem with calling someone "the bipolar" or "the schizophrenic," says trainer Melanie Green, Mental Health Recovery Coordinator for the Clark County Regional Support Network who will address how language shapes public perception during the training.

Green says one of the goals of the free trainings will be to rethink word choices to use "people first" language when talking to reporters to ensure that stigmatizing language is not carried over in news reporting, which shapes public perception about people with mental illness.

"Inaccurate representations of people with mental illness in the news and popular media is creating barriers for people with mental illness to gain employment, housing and develop relationships – three basic necessities to keeping us all contributing successfully to our communities," says Stuber, adding that the state's employment rate for people with mental illness is at 11% compared to 22% nationally. "It also creates a reluctance to seek treatment, often turning a manageable illness if caught early into something more difficult to treat, or worse, a tragic ending which is what you see reported in the media."

The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration reports that 38% of Americans are unwilling to be friends with someone having mental health difficulties; 4% do not want to have someone with schizophrenia as a close coworker; and 68% of Americans are unwilling to have someone with depression marry into their families. Additionally, national studies show that people with severe mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychosis, are 2 ½ times more likely to be attacked, raped or mugged than the general population.

One in four people will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their life. In Washington, one in six children experience behavioral challenges. By 2020, the World Health Organization predicts that mental illness will be the leading cause of work place disability.

"The growing number of people diagnosed with mental illness means that we all need to start being more aware, start treating people with mental illness with dignity and respect, help people get the treatment they need, and stop stereotyping in ways that perpetuate discrimination and isolation," says Stuber.

The trainings will run from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The morning session will focus on research that shows inaccurate portrayals of people with mental illness are common in news articles in Washington State, how language shapes perception, and tips for contacting local media. A panel of local journalists and professionals working in the public mental health arena will field questions over lunch. In the afternoon, participants will work in groups to come up with story ideas that portray mental illness more realistically and practice writing letters, op-ed and other news items for submission to local news organizations.

Clark-Vancouver Television (CVTV) will be taping the panel discussion at lunch on July 14, 2009 for rebroadcast on cable in the Clark County area. For a registration form, go to www.mhtransformation.wa.gov.

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DSHS does not discriminate and provides equal access to its programs and services for all persons without regard to race, color, gender, religion, creed, marital status, national origin, sexual orientation, age, veteran's status or the presence of any physical, sensory or mental disability.

Washington's Mental Health Transformation Project is funded through a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration to the Governor's Office. Washington is one of nine states receiving transformation grants. This state-wide effort engages consumers, family members, youth and agency partners in an effort to improve the state's mental health services and delivery system, consistent with the goals of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.