NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES IN NIGERIA: 2016-2020

One of the global health challenges today is the prevalence of mental illness. A mental disorder or mental illness (MI) is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbances in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Newspapers, as part of the mass media, are saddled with the responsibility of covering mental ill-health. This study sought to explore the newspaper coverage of mental health issues in Nigeria. The content analysis technique was used to analyse four national newspapers: Daily Sun, The Guardian, The Nation, and Vanguard for five years. Code sheet was used as an instrument of data collection and agenda-setting theory and social responsibility theory were used to explain the study. Findings from the research revealed that the frequency coverage on mental illness is 321 with insanity as the most covered mental illness issue by the newspapers. The prominence given to the coverage of mental illness was low. More so, news was found to be the story genre that received the most attention. In terms of the direction of coverage, findings showed that the newspapers covered mental illness positively. The study also revealed that the selected newspapers did not give depth to stories on mental illness. Based on the findings, it is recommended among other things that Newspapers should endeavour to place essence in the interpretation and analysis of news reports on mental health issues.