ABSTRACT
Research about people living with a mental health condition evidences cultural marginalization through the requirement to negotiate stigma and raises concerns about the development of subjectivity. A phenomenological study by Barham and Hayward examine the subjective meanings that users of mental healthcare services gave to their experiences in the social world. In a period in which globalization and technology increasingly pervade society, cultural and economic shifts, often propelled by media systems, can significantly impact people's lives. Consequently, part of the purpose in undertaking a Media Reception-Production Study is to focus upon identity and the struggle by people with mental health conditions around it. It seeks out those discourses impacting the subject in his/her struggle to define individual identity and in the production process, look innovatively for new portrayals offering indicators about ways forward in mediating mental health. Revealing that stigma is everywhere, and resident in nearly every society, Dovidio et al. say it produces existential anxiety in people.
