How does the public understand the causes of mental disorders? An analysis of Irish news media before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
Open Access Peer-reviewed Research Article Leigh Huggard , Cliódhna O’Connor Published: April 6, 2023 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284095 Abstract Public perceptions of the determinants of mental illness have important implications for attitudes and stigma, but minimal previous research has explored how causal attributions are spontaneously invoked in everyday public discourse. This study investigated how causal explanations for mental illness are disseminated in popular Irish news media, in the two years before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Keyword searches of a…