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Mass Mediation of Mental Illness in Sport
Get PDFPurpose
This chapter outlines the paucity of media research attending to mental health and mental illness in sport. As such, the purpose of this chapter is to encourage critical reflection and further research on the mass mediation of mental illness in sport.
Design/Method/Approach
In the first part of the chapter, we review the extensive literature addressing the mass mediation of mental illness and mental health in order to provide key reference points for future scholarship. We then suggest to potential avenues for sociological study of this topic: Talcott Parson’s sick role and Guy Debord’s spectacle.
Findings
The authors find that the notion of the sick role provides insight into the assumptions underpinning athlete disclosure of mental illness as well as encouragement of help seeking behavior in relation to mental illness specifically. From a broader perspective on mental health, the authors identify a central challenge of the spectacular presentation of mental health and well-being and the lived experience.
Research Limitations/Implications
The central limitation of the field currently is the dearth of research. Similarly, in providing a broad overview of key considerations, this chapter does not undertake primary media analysis of mental illness in sport. Nonetheless, the authors outline key considerations and lines of inquiry for the field
Bridging cultures: a programme of academic development in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Get PDFIn this paper, collaborative autoethnography is used to explore the authors’ involvement as participants in and facilitator of an academic development programme that took place in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Recognising the significant differences in cultural origin between the Iraqi participants and its British facilitator, the authors share their reflections on the programme. Consideration is given to the implications of cultural differences in respect of the authors’ expectations and experiences of this educational encounter, with particular emphasis on different approaches to learning and teaching prevailing in collectivist cultures, compared to those that are more individualist. The authors highlight the importance of early relationship-building in cross-cultural educational encounters, emphasising the two-way nature of this particular learning experience and the subsequent impact on their practice as educators
Understanding the experience of people living with severe asthma
No full textSevere asthma has a significant impact on the lives of people with the disease. The burden is both physical and emotional, with patients struggling to control symptoms of their asthma, as well as the significant comorbidities that exist with severe disease. These physical impacts lead to an emotional burden that has an impact not only on the individual but also on their relationships with loved ones, friends and work colleagues. Adverse effects from medications also negatively affect their experience of living with severe asthma. Together, the physical, emotional and medication burdens lead to people with severe asthma feeling isolated, alone and battling with their own identify. However, despite these negative impacts, people with severe asthma can also identify strategies to adapt to this disabling disease and demonstrate resilience. Understanding the experience of patients with severe asthma is imperative and can be aided by the use of patient-reported outcome measures. Strategies aimed at improving patient experience are a priority
Level 2 perspective-taking distinguishes automatic and non-automatic belief-tracking
Get PDFLittle is known about whether human beings’ automatic mindreading is computationally restricted to processing a limited kind of content, and what exactly the nature of that signature limit might be. We developed a novel object-detection paradigm to test adults’ automatic processing in a Level 1 perspective-taking (L1PT) context (where an agent’s belief, but not his visuospatial perspective, is relevantly different) and in a Level 2 perspective-taking (L2PT) context (where both the agent’s belief and visuospatial perspective are relevantly different). Experiment 1 uncovered that adults’ reaction times in the L1PT task were helpfully speeded by a bystander’s irrelevant belief when tracking two homogenous objects but not in the L2PT task when tracking a single heterogeneous object. The limitation is especially striking given that the heterogeneous nature of the single object was fully revealed to participants as well as the bystander. The results were replicated in two further experiments, which confirmed that the selective modulation of adults’ reaction times was maintained when tracking the location of a single object (Experiment 2) and when attention checks were removed (Experiment 3). Our findings suggest that automatic mindreading draws upon a distinctively minimalist model of the mental that underspecifies representation of differences in perspective relative to an agent’s position in space
Laboratory production of health and performance: an ethnographic investigation of an exercise physiology laboratory
Get PDFCritical scholars of sport and physical culture have devoted significant attention to developing critiques of epistemological hierarchies and the discursive power of biomedical knowledge in sport, exercise and physical activity. However, such work has largely failed to engage in an empirically grounded fashion with the processes of knowledge production. Furthermore, relative to its importance in the creation of knowledge, the laboratory is conspicuous in its absence from both critical discussions and as a site for empirical research. By way of response, this study draws on data collected from over 1000 h of participant observation and 53 semi-structured interviews to explore how underlying political and social values are articulated through relationships between knowledge creation, transfer and claims-making, and specific social frames in exercise physiology, a cornerstone of sports science. Rather than rehearse methodological challenges and critiques, the analysis presented demonstrates, contrary to critical analyses of scientific research that charge biomedical sciences with producing de-contextualised knowledge, laboratory-based sports science is thoroughly contextualised, albeit in specific and nuanced ways. Specifically, exercise physiology knowledge production is characterised by dehumanization and rehumanization processes. The relationship between these processes is not unilinear or sequential, but reciprocal and recursive. Nonetheless, dehumanization is the basis upon which exercise physiology knowledge is made applicable. Rehumanization is how it becomes desirable
