I look pretty striking. Big red hair, big brown glasses, big blue teeth. I’m that sort of caricature that if you pass someone on the street who also has red hair and glasses then you’ll tell me later that you saw someone who LOOKS JUST LIKE YOU earlier. Gee, thanks.

 

Looking at me directly, just plain old me, you cannot tell I have a mental illness. Because the whole point is that it’s mental.

 

And, when I’m poorly, you cannot tell that by looking at me either. Okay, sometimes you can. Maybe I haven’t been eating and maybe I’m not bothering to draw on my eyebrows (normally a dead giveaway, actually). But sometimes, because I’m just fickle like that, I look proper smart when I’m poorly. Pristine hair, make up and glowing skin. Probably because I’m either trying to hide that inside I’m all messed up, or because I’m making an extra effort to look after myself.

 

So why is it that – when it comes to images for stuff about mental health – that it’s always a bloody black and white picture of some lass looking dead upset, eating her bottom lip for supper and grasping at her hair like it’s trying to kill her?

 

We’re talking about the HEADCLUTCHER.

 

Yes, you all know what I’m on about. And you know, the only time I ever clutch my head in desperation is actually when I see pictures like that illustrating stories about mental health. But why, I hear you cry, is it such a bloody problem? Come on. It’s not that bad.

 

Well, yes it is, actually.

 

For a few reasons. Important reasons.

 

Here’s more than 3,000 words explaining why, why you should care, and what you can do about. Buckle yourselves in. It’s a long ride. And it doesn’t even LOOK at stigmatising language. Just the one picture.

 

As journalists, you probably pride yourself on accuracy and responsible reporting. Well, on the headclutching thing you’ll have fallen at both hurdles.

 

A big misconception about mental people like me is that poor brain health is something that you should be able to see. It isn’t.

 

Firstly, accuracy. We do not all go about wailing in despair, or get locked in an attic with the rest of the disturbed ex-wives. Nor do we gad about putting on showstopping, visual, public displays of our ill health for all to see – like Britney reaching for the hair clippers. Not all of our conditions can be seen with a brain scan, with cortexes lighting up like glowworms on a  computer screen.

 

Anything that suggests mental ill health is something that can be seen is wrong. As is anything that suggests mental ill health presents itself in obvious expressions of despair or angst. It doesn’t.

 

Making these suggestions, or reinforcing these ideas, all contributes to misconceptions about mental illness. Which brings us onto the second point about why you shouldn’t be using the ol’ headclutcher there – responsible reporting. Be “on the side of the angels” as my old assistant editor would say.

 

Using headclutchers as stock images for your mental health stories really does not help people facing mental ill health. Reasserting these points simply adds to the contstant battle that mentally ill people face every day. That is not being on the side of the angels.

 

And don’t think that your stories don’t matter. Your stories absolutely do matter. That is why you should treat them with care and respect. As a journalist, you are dealing with the lives of so many people. You help create our world’s storyline. NEVER underestimate that. You all know how many problems getting a phone number wrong for a local jumble sale can cause. And that’s just a bloody phone number. When you’re dealing with mental health there is a lot more at stake. And you have a golden opportunity to help make our world’s storyline a little kinder, a little more accurate. That’s important. And something I tried to stress to reporters day-in day-out when I worked as a news editor.

 

In simple terms, if you want to be on the side of the angels, the idea that mental illness can be “seen” makes reaching out so much harder. Take this personal example. I bump into my dad on Northumberland Street. Outside M&S. I haven’t seen him for three weeks. I’m heading back to work after a meeting, and running late. I am dressed smartly, I am wearing full make up. My hair is beautifully blowdried. I look busy and important. I am distracted thinking about what I have to do when I get back.

 

What you cannot see is that for the past fortnight I have been plagued by thoughts of killing myself.

 

“Hello darling!” my dad cries. “Wow, you look well. You look so… HEALTHY. Blossoming, in fact! I’m so pleased to see you looking so great! You must be doing so well.”

 

Not that the entrance to M&S is the most appropriate place to turn round to a parent and tell them: “No, actually, dad. I’ve been spending most of time trying to shut up the dark cavernous, nasty trapdoor in my head that keeps egging me on to do myself in. But great news that my mascara has held up today! *thumbs up*”

 

As sweet and lovely and kind as it was for my dad to tell me I looked well (a nice boost for anyone), the assumption (never assume!) that my appearance being on fleek meant my brain was also on fleek is not helpful.

 

One, it immediately makes the “actually, I’m not okay” conversation just that little bit harder.

 

Two, it gets ME doubting myself (“Well, surely I’m not that poorly, if I look well”).

 

Three, in comes the secondary emotion of guilt (“Shit. I’m lying to everyone about how well I am, simply by looking fly. I am a bastard manipulative person”).

 

Four, sudden panic (“Fuck. Do I need to look bad so people can tell I’m not doing well? Quick! Stop wearing make up. Yes, I know it makes you feel better but now everyone thinks you’re okay and will think you’re being a lying attention-seeker when you tell them your suicidal! Oh FFS cognitive dissonance, you absolute BELLEND.”)

 

Five, destruction. (“Right. That’s it. If I want people to realise I’m poorly I need to do some pretty drastic communicating – time for a crisis!” OR “Right. That’s it. I can’t have people realise I’m poorly so I’ll hide it even more now until it all gets far too much – time for a crisis!”)

 

Here, for your entertainment and delight, are a few other of those horrible thoughts that come about, thanks to the idea that mental illness can be seen as clearly as the nose on your face.

 

“If I go to a therapist, then surely everyone will be able to SEE that I’m mad. Because you can see when people are mad. Shit. Does that mean people can see I am mad?”

“Well, I’m not doing anything like sitting in an underpass clutching my head, so I can’t be poorly enough to ring the Samaritans. They’re not for people like me. They’re for people sitting in underpasses clutching their head. Because that’s what people look like when they’re poorly.”

 

“I need to be biting my lip and clutching my head for anyone to realise that I’m not feeling okay. It’s obvious that when people clutch their head and bite their lip then they are obviously facing mental distress. So I will go and obviously bite my lip and clutch my head over here because that’s the international shorthand for ‘I AM MENTALLY POORLY’. I won’t say anything to anyone. Biting my lip and clutching my head should be enough […] HELLO! WHY IS NO ONE NOTICING THAT I’M POORLY?! I’M BITING MY LIP AND CLUTCHING MY HEAD OVER HERE GODDAMMIT. ISN’T IT OBVIOUS?!”

 

These points *may* seem churlish and somewhat over-egged. But they are not. I have gone through each one of them myself.

 

Every time a mentally ill person sees a head clutch image, we feel a bit shit to be honest. Being confronted with something that screams “This is how the world sees you!” or “Look! This is how you should be behaving if you are REALLY mentally ill”. Awww, baby snowflake. There there. Why change the habit of a lifetime just cause one little girl at her computer screen feels a bit pissed off?

 

Why change indeed? But it’s not just one little girl. It’s a whole one in four of us AT ANY ONE TIME that you’re kinda pigeon-holing. Suggesting that we all look in such a predictable, similar way, suggests we all behave in a predictable, similar way. It reasserts the incorrect idea that mental illnesses are sort of all the same.

 

Culturally, this feeds into a much bigger issue. This completely wrong idea that mental health problems are something you can “see” nourishes a much wider, dangerous, social narrative.

 

It is one of the reasons why only 37% of people reported their mental health concerns were  taken seriously by A&E staff. [Attitudes being one reason, poor training, lack of experience and unsuitable environment for mental health care being other causes that MUST be addressed. It’s a very complex issue about education and access to services].

 

The assumption (again by ill-experienced staff and by policy makers) that mental health issues should somehow be visible and obvious is one of the main reasons why so many people have been wrongly deemed “fit for work” by a welfare system that holds anything but people’s welfare at the heart of it. People kill themselves because of this.

 

Ultimately, this idea that mental ill health can be seen contributes to suicide being the single biggest killer of men aged under 45. The idea that extreme mental ill health, thoughts of suicide, should somehow be obvious. It isn’t. To devastating effects.

 

Because we can see, just by looking at someone, that they are struggling. Of course.

 

If you are committed to accuracy and being an ethical journalist – don’t use these pictures.

 

Using a headclutcher as your stock image just means you are feeding these ugly, devastating beasts. It means you are being complicit in the problem. It means you are feeding the idea that THIS is what mental ill health looks like. That there is somehow a catch-all visual guide, like those ticky-off Michelin books you used as a kid on motorway journeys.

 

Using these pictures means you are playing your part in the shitty messed-up social system that still sees mental illness belittled, people not taken seriously, dangerous misconceptions flourish, and folk in desperate need of care instead thrown a million and one extra battles and shown a hell of a lot more discrimination than anyone should have to face in a so-called civilised society.

 

Yeah, but don’t we KNOW all of this already? Really? Don’t judge a book by its cover, we all KNOW that. That’s why it’s always that guy who is a bit of a bastard at the start of the film who turns out to be her ‘one true love’. And it’s also why I still ploughed on with The Rattle Bag, despite the edition I bought having the most ridiculous, airy-fairy lurid, look-at-the-pretty-butterflies jacket on this side of The Adventures of Angelina Ballerina.

 

Yes, we all know this. So why is it that the lip-chewing tearful headclutcher is still a go-to stock image for most non-health sector literature? (Yes, my beloved mainstream media, I’m looking at you).

 

And let’s be honest. Sometimes the old faithful headclutcher just looks completely and utterly ridiculous (as demonstrated by the picture that inspired this post)…

 

screen-shot-2017-02-23-at-22-36-59

 

Buzzfeed made a very noble attempt to address this point with its ‘This is what depression really looks like’ post. It encouraged people to share photos that were taken of them while going through some proper rough shit, but yet where they were still smiling. It wasn’t the camera lying. It was them. Just because we might be smiling and our eyebrows are pretty on fleek does not mean that our brains are also in their Sunday Best. Smile for the camera, sweeties.

 

The Buzzfeed piece was commendable – a noble effort to normalise mental illness and to literally illustrate the point that appearances can be deceiving. Just because you look great on the outside, doesn’t mean you feel great on the inside. And vice versa.

 

But the problem is, as inspiring and “nice” as this post was, it doesn’t address the practical issues of news, deadlines and the power of pictures. When picking an image to go with a news story, you want that one, chokehold, slap-bang THIS is what it’s all about picture. And that’s no mean feat. Especially when local newsrooms specifically are being culled of skilled and experienced photographers and talented picture editors. Those guys are gold dust.

 

Accompanying images have to tell the story. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is my favourite news mantra. No story up online without a picture. No tweet without a pic. Pictures are important. They are indeed worth 1,000 words. You need to know, without context, what that story is about. Straight away. BAM. That’s what makes a front page pic.

 

When confronted with a murder, for instance, does it add to the story to have a Google Streetview from five years ago, or the police officers stood by the crime scene tape in the freezing cold gloaming? No contest.

 

A happy smiling lady with the wind in her hair may well be suffering from mental despair and torment. But that certainly doesn’t mean that, in practical terms, it’s the right picture to use with a story about teenage self harm. (Nor is it the right picture to advertise tampons, no matter what the ad men would have you believe).

 

Using happy faces on stories about the difficulties of mental illness doesn’t wash. The journalist in me immediately snaps. It’s factually inaccurate for starters if you’re looking at the nasty bits of mental ill health. The cognitive dissonance is too much. Shiny, happy people holding hands we definitely are not.

 

NOTE: If you’re on about getting better in your story though, as you were. Carry on. And thumbs up for spreading the positive vibes. Points to you.

 

But as I’ve said, the headclutcher pic is equally wrong. Using pictures of people just looking normal, doing really dull shit like making a cup of tea, might be the most factually accurate. And increasingly that sort of picture is being used to good effect in local human interest pieces with everyday Joes who are talking about what goes on in their brains. Long may this continue. I’ve seen some GREAT ones of late. I particularly loved these pics from Newcastle’s Chronicle that went with a story about a great fighter of a woman called Sarah, who took part in a psychosis study my trust was part of. They gave of a sense of who she is beautifully.

 

But sadly, not every story written about mental health has a good case study to go with it. It’s great when they do, because, well, it’s a better story: I much prefer hearing anything from the horse’s mouth, and (point of this blog post) means the appropriate picture issue needn’t exist.

 

Sadly we’re still at a stage where getting a hold of mental health case studies, who are willing to be pictured, in enough time for deadline, is still a bloody hard task. Even for those of us who work in mental health communications ourselves. As I have learned, it is not just a simple matter of “picking up the phone” – as much as I am trying to get us to that stage.

 

AND, if you’re writing a pretty generic story about mental illness “in general” then using a random picture of a random bloke certainly doesn’t give the reader any bloody idea of what the piece is actually about. When you’re chomping at the bit for clicks, and sharing on social media, the picture needs to tell your story instantly.

 

It’s a tough one. Especially when the headclutcher image is so seared onto our brains. It’s the first thing you think of when asked to picture mental illness, because it’s all you’ve ever been fed. Example? Just take a look at these top images when you search Shutterstock.

 

There is some SERIOUS headclutching going on there. We’ve got the glum Jeremy Clarkson looking out a window. The lady who looks like she’s really unhappy with her new fringe. The nail-biter who looks like she’s about to be sick. The clinical, pristine white of ‘the doctor will see you now’. But that middle bottom one. That’s not TOO bad. It would do me. I kinda get it’s got something to do with people and heads and differences between the outside and the inside. Hmmm.

 

A search for ‘mental health’ is a little more promising…

 

Word clouds are fine if you’re doing a geet big massive poster somewhere. But it’s not going to work as a thumbnail when you social the shit out of your ’10 signs your hamster is depressed’ listicle. The glowing brain thing is a bit creepy. But not as creepy as the old man touching up the vulnerable young filly in the second image.

 

And as for depression? Don’t even go there.

 

For fuck’s sake, man.

 

Opting for these sorts of pictures is the easy option right now. They do tell the reader what you’re writing about (even if they shouldn’t). But they are inaccurate and  stigmatising and not very helpful…

 

Of course, whenever I’m ill, I immediately go and sit in a tunnel and put my head in my hands. That’s how you tell people are sick, you know? Just ask that mate you’re worried about if they’ve been sitting in any tunnels recently. That’ll let you know how they are…

 

And, as increasingly inexperienced and stressed-out young kids take up the reins in newsrooms, that’s what we will keep on getting. Because that’s what they think is the done thing. And they don’t have any time to go prancing about through stock image libraries…

 

News editors, picture editors (hello! are you still there? *waves*), subs, managing editors. All of you. This is where you step in.

 

We need you lovely guys on board to help us change the headclutcher as the go-to image for mental health stories. If you see it, pipe up. Change it. Explain to your staff that it’s not the sort of picture you want to see.

 

If we are going to get your readers to stop thinking HEADCLUTCH every time they think mental health, then you must play your part in re-training their brain. Like Pavlov and his dog (if that’s not horribly condescending).

 

But HOW? What can we use? We’ve said no the headclutching, ‘man making tea’ doesn’t tell the story, nor does ‘happy smiling woman on beach’. Wordcloud is too busy to make a good thumbnail. News desks, I HEAR YOU GUYS!

 

Time to Change has come up with a few options for you. They have a stock image library that is useful when deadlines are tight and you haven’t got the time to wring your hands over what is stigmatising or not.

 

Not all of them are perfect. ‘Lone man looking out of window’ is a good option for loneliness, but maybe not for schizophrenia. And some of their ‘chatting by photocopier’ pics are poorly composed and would be mega hard to crop. Plus there’s not a good selection of talls and wides.

 

If you still have staff toggies, and some spare time on your hands (HA! HA!), get your work experience kids to pose up looking at leaflets, or the MIND website, or chatting over a coffee. Maybe browsing on a phone. Even better, get some shots of people chatting by your local landmarks (NOT anywhere that attracts people in distress, like on a locally-known bridge or cliff… get what I’m saying?).

 

Here’s some good examples I found on Shutterstock so you don’t have to…

 

. It's counselling, Jim, but not as we know it. No head clutching, no white coats and above all, it looks safe and friendly. Hurrah.

. Old but gold. A close-up hand picture tells a thousands stories.

. Another counselling session. Again, no white coats. And this dude is smiling and looks thoughtful. You don't have to be tearing your hair out to go to counselling. You can be in therapy and present as a normal human being!

. More hands. No white coats. Bingo.

. Who doesn’t love a standard brain picture?

. When you really need to make it obvious – engrave some words on some machinery! (Don’t try this in your print hall, the guys on the presses might not be too impressed).

. She really looks like she’s listening. And there’s no awful outdated decor to distract your reader with thoughts of “oooh, I wouldn’t choose those cushions”.

. This dude again. I LOVE him. His facial expressions are just perfect.

 

Hopefully, that’s enough to give you some ideas to solve a really annoying problem. We know every picture tells a story. And we KNOW that reporters and editors want to get that story right. Which is why we do need to think carefully about how we illustrate mental health stories fairly, accurately, responsibly, and effectively.

 

Journalism. I gave you a LOT. Hell, I gave my life to you, I love you that much. Show me – and people like me – that you love us too. Stop the headclutching.

 

It does my head in.

 

Please do link me to any good and bad examples you find of illustrating mental health stories. And, if you’re a journalist, humour me – let me know if this is something you’ll bear in mind next time you write about mental ill health.

 

Source: ontheborderlines.wordpress