Comparative Study On Media Image And Self Image Of Depression Patients From The Perspective Of Health Communication

Depression,as a modern mental disease,has become one of the focuses of society due to its increasingly severe incidence.Based on the perspective of health communication,the study uses content analysis and text analysis to analyze the media image of depression patients represented by ‘ Health Times Network ’‘New Beijing News Network ’ and ‘ Surging News ’,and the self-image of depression patients in the self-report of patients with depression on the network platform‘Zhihu Network ’ and We Chat public account ‘Depression Research Institute’.We compare the two images to find similarities and differences,and try to analyze the reasons for the deviation,so as to provide an effective path for the healthy communication of depression.The study found that the sad and painful image created by the media is consistent with the patient ’ s narration,but there are also deviations between the media image and the self image.The media treat depressive patients as a whole with a fixed label,presenting a negative and single image.The deep analysis of depression patients not only shows their vulnerable image of suffering from disease,but also shows the image of the protesters who struggle with depression and actively treat depression.The image of self-narrative is more multidimensional.The media image of patients with depression has the problem of stigma.The media prefers expert discourse in the choice of health information,and the persuasion effect is poor.The reason is that the current dominant paradigm of health communication is the top-down health information design,and the positioning of the media determines the value orientation of media reports.As a market-oriented media,news events with rich news value are naturally preferred when reporting,and conflict events are more attractive to the audience.Secondly,journalists have insufficient health knowledge reserves and ignore the pathological factors of depression in the reports,which is also related to the lack of authoritative discourse in the field of depression to guide social cognition.Therefore,correcting deviation and improving media image path can be carried out from two angles of media internal construction and informing the public.