Unification and differentiation: a study of the social representations of mental illness

Using the theory of social representations, this small-scale, qualitative study considers whether mental illness is differentiated by a lay population. Three focus groups (total n=17), using students were conducted and content analysed, along with a random sample of articles from two British newspapers, ‘The Mirror’ and ‘The Daily Telegraph’. A strong social representation of unified ‘mental illness’ was found, with the central aspects of unpredictability, permanency, violence and Otherness. However, differentiation of mental illness in social representation was also found, both along biomedical lines, and through the idea of a set of continua between the more normal and the more mentally ill. It will be suggested that differentiation occurs in today’s society due to efforts to maintain both existing ideology and a positive identity, but that any condition that can be labelled ‘mental illness’ will also be inevitably associated with the unified representation of mental illness, limiting the effect of this differentiation. It will be concluded that differentiation of mental illness has been somewhat overlooked in social representations studies, and merits further attention from a theoretical perspective.