Christina Athanasopoulou*, University of Turku, Turku, Finland Heli Hätönen, University of Turku, Turku, Finland Ioannis Apostolakis, National School of Public Health, Athens, Greece Christos Lionis, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece Maritta Välimäki, University of Turku; Southwest Hospital District, Turku, Finland Track: Research Presentation Topic: other Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Online searches for health and mental health information are constantly increasing and given YouTube’s popularity, its videos could be a potential source of mental health information. Recent studies investigated YouTube videos disseminating information about various health issues, but none about mental health. According to the GAMIAN-Europe study, Greece and Finland represent two European extremes in people’s beliefs about the degree of devaluation and discrimination towards people with mental disorders. Noticeably, it is important to examine how schizophrenia is presented in one of the most popular websites among Greek and Finnish Internet users. This study could raise awareness about the importance of regulating popular websites’ content, since they could influence Internet users’ beliefs about highly stigmatizing disorders such as schizophrenia.

Objective: To investigate how YouTube videos present schizophrenia when the term is searched in Greek and Finnish language.

Methods: We searched YouTube using the search term ‘schizophrenia’ in Greek (‘σχιζοφρένεια’) and Finnish (‘skitsofrenia’) language. The first 20 videos from each search (N=40) were retrieved. Videos not in Greek or Finnish language, duplicates, unavailable or incomprehensible, and incidental were excluded. Specific neutral or positive, and negative representations were identified within each video by using deductive content analysis by two raters. Videos were then categorised according to their representations of schizophrenia: 1) neutral or positive, i.e. when promoted mostly objective, medically appropriate beliefs, and/or promoted positive expectations about schizophrenia or those affected, 2) negative, i.e. when promoted mostly negative beliefs and/or prejudice towards schizophrenia or those affected. After categorisation of the data, descriptive statistics (f, %, Mean, Md) was used to identify how often these categories appeared in the data.

Results: Among the Greek (GR, n = 16) and Finnish (FI, n = 13) videos which were included in the study (N=29; 73%), the most popular video category was music (N=16; GR=8, FI=8). The majority of Greek and Finnish videos tended to present schizophrenia in a negative way (N=25; GR=15, FI=10). In Greek videos schizophrenia was often used as a synonym to: love obsession (n=5), dangerousness (n=4), contradictive ideas or feelings or irrational opinions (n=3). Negative representations apparent in Finnish videos were: confusion (n=3), dangerousness (n=2), or unwillingness to get better (n=2). A minority of videos tended to present schizophrenia in a neutral/positive way (N=4; GR=1, FI=3), which mostly promoted beliefs about recovery (n=3).

Conclusions: Both Greek and Finnish first appearing YouTube videos, frequently tended to present schizophrenia in a negative way. YouTube is usually among the top three websites globally, with numerous daily users, thus, it could be used as a potential learning tool, by disseminating videos presenting neutral/positive information about mental illness. In that case, appropriate YouTube videos which appear first in search results, could increase awareness about mental illness and potentially diminish stigmatizing beliefs.