Psychological Field Assignment

Discrepancies between actual disorders and media portrayals

There is a great difference on the information that one is bound to get on psychological textbooks and information on the media. One factor that tends to create this disparity is the difference in the understanding of authors and journalists. In most cases, journalists only have the ability of presenting a story clearly to the people and sometimes they do not have succinct understanding of some issues they report (Riff, Lacy, & Fico, 2014). Information regarding to psychological disorders is one of the areas that seem to be highly affected by these two avenues where one can find information. 

In many social media and news anchoring platforms, it is evident that the media believes that those who are mentally ill are criminals who are violent and need to stay away from healthy people (Ferguson, 2013). This is different from the point of argument among many psychologists, as they understand that people with mental illness are not criminals and they can as well regain their normal condition. From books authored by psychologists, they have a clear understanding of mental illnesses and they often treat it as a disorder that can be cured through different therapies that the victim can be subjected to. However, In the newspapers, any person has the right to give their views concerning their thought on the issues of psychological disorders and in the current situation we have been facing heated debates concerning the harm that psychiatric hospital cause in the community. According to psychologist scholars, they see such arguments as acts of insanity that many people on their right mind should not be arguing about (Ferguson, Muñoz, Garza & Galindo, 2014). These are the hospitals that have been aiding people suffering from different conditions of mental illness to recover. Thus, by saying that they cause harm then it means those journalists who argue about this do not value life.