Monday, 7 March 2016

Dalal Salamah

Under the headline "One Quarter of Society Mentally Ill," a daily newspaper on 29 February published an interview with Dr. Nael Udwan, director of the National Center for Mental Health, in which it quoted him as saying that 25% of the Jordanian people are mentally ill. The statement by Udwan, which was used as a headline for the interview, came in reply to a question about the prevalence of mental illnesses in Jordan. He said: "There are no accurate statistics about mental illnesses in Jordan. However, like other countries, and according to statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO), one in four people is mentally ill, which means that 25% of societies are mentally ill. This applies to Jordanian society."

The above percentage was mentioned in the press coverage of a report, which the WHO issued in September 2010 under the headline "Mental Health and Development: Targeting People With Mental Health Conditions as a Vulnerable Group." All of the coverage was based on a press release issued by the WHO itself about its own report.

The interesting thing here is that the WHO did not say that one in four people in the world is "mentally ill." It said in the English version of the release that "an estimated one in four people globally will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime." In the Arabic version of the release, the WHO said that "estimates are that one quarter of the world population will experience a mental illness at one stage in their lifetime."

Therefore, the WHO did not say decisively that 25% of the world population is indeed mentally ill; it said that the percentage has to do with "estimates" of those who are likely to develop mental disorders. This does not make this percentage a solid fact, which is what a lot of the press coverage of the press release did, using decisive headlines about the report, such as "One Quarter of World Population Mentally Ill."

The other important point related to this coverage, obviously, has to do with the date of the "estimates" announced by the WHO. They date back six years, which raises a question about their accuracy in reflecting reality (even if they are estimates) after the lapse of all these years. Following this news in the media shows that the headline decisively stated that one quarter of the world are mentally ill or that one quarter of Jordanian society are mentally ill in the reports that "applied" the percentage to Jordan.

Tracking this news reveals that this kind of headline is appealing and fit for media consumption. This was the case in 2010 when the report was issued. We also see that this headline will reappear every now and then and on different occasions. We find it in news published in 2011, 2013, and 2014.

It is noticeable in this case that some press coverage disregards accuracy. This is done by turning an estimated figure into a decisive fact, at least in headlines. It also goes beyond this by using this figure, without identifying its exact source, and being satisfied with attributing it to "international statistics." However, a part of the credibility of circulating a figure comes from the accurate identification of the entity that issued it, the time of its issuance, and the context in which it originated. Usually, news reports that use this figure as simply a sensational headline ignore this.