5. Discourse Analysis

i. Mental illness in news and current affairs

There was a significant preoccupation across both fictional and non-fictional programme genres with mental illness, depression and suicide. Although the sample cannot support this, this may be attributable to rising suicide rates and increased public awareness about depression in Ireland.^[12] The tendency of mainstream news bulletins to focus on murders, accidents and disasters (in other words to report predominantly 'bad news') or on changes in government policy or health service provision means that most items on mental health in the news tend to have negative associations. Where mental illness was reported in news items captured in the sample analysed, the main focus was on lack of mental health services for adolescents, the effect of work stoppages on mental-health services caused by the nurses' strike, the mental health of the Virginia Tech shooter and items on suicide caused by depression.

It is arguable that, collectively, this can create an impression of the mentally ill as dangerous, aggressive or violent, on the one hand, or as a burden to the taxpayer and the health system, on the other. In the sample analysed here, there was considerable focus on mental illness in relation to violent attacks, such as the Virginia Tech killings by Cho Seung-Hui or the case of a man, described as 'unstable', who attacked the Pope-mobile and was taken to a psychiatric unit. The radio discussions that were triggered by the Virginia Tech killings, in particular, focussed on the killer's antisocial behaviour. As the story developed, a media portrait emerged of a tortured, silent loner, whose fictional writings in his English-literature modules had already aroused suspicion and concern among his professors.

The only substantial exception within the sample, to this general tendency within news and current programming, came with a discussion between Pat Kenny and Carol Coleman about what might have driven Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter to commit this crime ("Today with Pat Kenny", RTÉ Radio 1). Here, there was considerable speculation about his family's finances, the fact that he came to the US at the age of 8 and that he wrote about a young man's dysfunctional relationship with his stepfather. This represents a significant shift away from the tendency within much media discourse on mental illness to focus on it as a problem of the individual (chemical, genetic) by looking instead at the social causes of depression, psychosis and other behaviours.

ii. Mental illness in current affairs

As the "Today with Pat Kenny" example above illustrates, the format of current affairs programmes and chat shows tends to allow for more contextualised discussion than is the case with standard news bulletins. Thus, although the exclusion of advertisements from the sample meant that public-awareness campaigns were not included - which tend to project positive, proactive or sympathetic discourses on depression and mental illness - the radio chat show and magazine programmes captured also leaned heavily toward a progressive discourse of de-stigmatization.

In the sample under analysis, several Irish-produced radio shows were explicitly concerned with the social causes of depression, mental illness, suicide and substance abuse. An edition of "The Breakfast Show" (Newstalk 106-108 FM) with Claire Byrne and Ger Gilroy was devoted to a discussion about schizophrenia and psychosis. The contributors to this discussion were consultant psychologist Dr. Michael Corrie and a man suffering from psychosis called Brian Hartnett, who founded a support group called Voices Ireland. What was of particular interest about this interview was the way in which a medical discourse was abandoned in favour of a social discourse to address schizophrenia.

People with this type of mental-health difficulty were described by both Hartnett and Corrie as 'voice hearers', which not only implied agency or active involvement but also served to render the condition less threatening.

Indeed, Dr. Corrie explicitly dismissed the pathologisation of schizophrenia, psychosis and mania suggesting that these were not in fact diseases. He claimed that if you went to a hospital with a history of psychosis, schizophrenia or mania, you would probably be told you had a disease. However, he argued that these conditions were not a disease but rather a " disorder of thought and a disorder of mood", usually with an identifiable cause. Hartnett's account of his diagnosis and subsequent coming to terms with his condition also presented a powerful counter-discourse to conventional medical and scientific understandings of schizophrenia. He reclaimed his own experiences from the realm of the irrational or of 'insanity' by talking about his voices as a meaningful part of his life:

"From my point of view it was very real to me...in a kind of a spiritual sense...I felt I was tapped into something very real, and eh I still do really, I don't dismiss my voices as being necessarily just generated in my mind...I think that there are...I think that probably there's more to it than just a diagnosis.

Any time you'd normally hear about hearing voices it's usually in the context of...oh you know the guy is mad or that person is mad or that lunatic is on the war path you know hearing voices...but I mean for me it's a daily way of life...for me it's a daily way of life really and it's taken a long time for me to come to terms with it and to deal with it on my own level."

In this discussion, treatment of the condition was envisaged as an holistic intervention, which took into account the social causes and social conditions of the person's life, rather than an isolated targeting of symptoms with medication.

Thus, although medication was perceived to be useful in the early stages of treatment and was recommended in small doses to keep the condition under control (or as Hartnett put it to "nullify the intensity of the voices"), the real focus was on understanding the traumatic experience(s) that caused the condition and on developing coping strategies that involved friends and family.

Psychosis was understood not as genetic, hereditary or pathological but as the aftermath of traumatic events. Implicit in this discourse was an acknowledgement of how society's misunderstandings and fears of schizophrenia have constructed it as a much-feared illness and of the role that society must now play in removing the obstacles faced by 'voice hearers'.

An item on depression on "The Shaun Doherty Show" (Highland Radio) addressed the topic in a similar way. Two callers, Paul and Patricia, both of whom were admitted to psychiatric care for depression and post-natal depression, respectively, were critical of the way in which medication is used to treat mental illness. While Paul acknowledged the importance of controlled medication in some stages of treatment, he claimed that his depression was caused by life events and that he had to deal with their after-effects through psychotherapy. He was critical of the fact that he had been given a 3-month supply of sleeping tablets when he was discharged from in-patient care, given that he had previously had serious problems with medication abuse and his doctors were aware of this. Patricia said that she understood how people could become institutionalised and claimed that she never would have come out of care without family backup. She also claimed that while she was in care she was heavily medicated and, by stealing one of her patient files, discovered that certain drugs had been tested on her. She also spoke of the stigma attached to mental illness and recounted a more recent experience, whereby she was admitted to hospital for an unrelated illness and was advised by the doctor attending her not to mention her psychiatric history, the implication being that this might encourage doctors to take her account of things less seriously.

The social causes of depression were also the focus of an interview on NEAR FM 90.3 FM with Fine Gael election candidate Brody Sweeney and a lengthy discussion on Newstalk's "The Wide Angle", which explored adolescent suicide and alcoholism and drug-taking, respectively.

Although Brody conceded in the NEAR FM interview that he was no expert on the topic of suicide, he mentioned factors such as the competitive pressures of being a young male, the changing nature of the modern nuclear family and the effects of bullying on young people. In "The Wide Angle", Karen Coleman spoke to solicitor and former president of the Irish law society Geraldine Clarke, Executive Director of the American Fullbright Commission, Colleen Dubey and columnist for the Daily Mail, Rónán Mullen about cocaine addiction.

Although there was little consensus about the causes of increased cocaine use, there was a general acknowledgement of drug-taking and alcohol abuse as disabling and an implicit framing of the problem as one which was socially-created and which therefore must be solved through social rather than individual intervention. Increased prosperity, peer pressure, lack of spirituality, glamorous media images and adults leading by bad example were all cited as causes of the problem. With the exception of Rónán Mullen, who saw selfishness at the heart of middle-class drug taking and suggested that alcoholism and drug-taking needed to be more stigmatised than they were in Irish society, the explanations and solutions suggested by the other contributors to the discussion stood out in stark contrast to the way in which alcoholism and substance abuse were addressed by the American fictional programmes from the sample (see section 5.3.viii on "Alcoholism and addiction" below).

Programmes such as this appear to play an important role in de-stigmatising mental illness. Persons with a mental health difficulty are represented as articulate, intelligent and coherent. They demonstrate that their conditions can be actively worked on and thus arguably empower other listeners with similar conditions.

To some extent, this constitutes the prioritisation of a social model over a medical one, since people are encouraged to deal with their conditions in the context of their lives, past and present, rather than through institutionalisation or medication. This implicitly puts an onus on the wider society to treat mental illness with sensitivity and compassion and to understand many of the problems faced by people with mental health difficulties as having social roots.

It also suggests that many of the obstacles faced by people with mental health difficulties are not due to symptoms inherent to their condition but rather to society's fear and intolerance of these symptoms. These programmes also educate about different impairments and advertise important support services such as Aware and Grow, a voluntary group offering therapeutic support to individuals with mental health-related disabilities.

Finally, mental illness, depression and substance abuse were sometimes referred to in lighter magazine or reality-television formats. Increasingly the preoccupation of reality-television programmes with famous individuals is played out not only through an interest in their properties or family life but also in their personal problems (see the section on alcoholism and addiction below). Nervous breakdowns, substance abuse and addiction, anorexia and depression are all aspects of celebrities' lives that are frequently reported on and examined. For example, one episode of TV3's magazine programme "Xposé" captured in the programme sample addressed Dolores O'Riordan's nervous breakdown and experience with anorexia caused by the pressures of starting her career so young. Although this is a positive representation of a real person overcoming personal difficulties, it could be argued that, unlike the more serious current-affairs and chat-show formats, such programmes serve to individualise disability in that the issues are presented in isolation and as challenges that individuals must overcome through inner strength, family support or therapy in order to regain a normal life (rather than considering the notion that these problems have predominantly social causes).

iii. Mental illness in fictional genres

As noted above, casual references to mental illness were common in American sitcoms, soaps and other forms of drama. However, mental illness was also noted as a significant theme in several serial dramas and soap operas. During the period in which the television sample was collected, post-natal depression / psychosis was a major plot strand in both "Coronation Street" (TV3) and "The Bill" (RTÉ1). In both cases, women suffering from extreme post-natal depression had acted irrationally, leaving their babies in public places, and had been questioned by the police about their behaviour. In the "Coronation Street" subplot, it emerged that Ashley's wife Claire had been sectioned after the birth of her second child, placed in a secure institution for three weeks and put on medication.

However, it was not clear whether or not the viewer was supposed to sympathise with Claire. She had allegedly set fire to their house and even Ashley was having trouble believing her. However, the aggressive and unsympathetic manner in which she was treated by the police could also be interpreted as a critique of the law's insensitivity to and ignorance about mental health issues.

In the episode of "The Bill", on the other hand, the policewoman dealing with the woman who had abandoned her child was particularly sensitive and understanding. It transpired that she too was pregnant and that these events made her wonder if she herself would be able to cope with a baby on her own. Soap's ability to deal with everyday issues means that it can address disability issues that relate to the lives of real people, and programmes are often followed by announcements about helplines and websites for viewers who have been affected by these issues. However, given the genre's reliance on dramatic conflict and individual transformation, soap also tends to exaggerate mental and emotional crises.

In an episode of "Neighbours" (RTÉ2) in the sample, a 'psychopathic' young man was questioned in court. The solicitor ostensibly tried to demonstrate that he was not the 'monster' others had described him as but secretly wrote "she never loved you" on the palms of his hands, knowing that this would provoke rage. The young man flew out of control and had to be restrained, thus reinforcing the stereotype of people with mental illness as violent, dangerous, unpredictable and in need of institutionalisation.

The extreme dramatisation of psychosis and post-natal depression in the programmes mentioned here arguably serves to further stigmatise these conditions. Moreover, the genre's tendency to focus on individual characters struggling to come to terms with and compensate for their impairments by adapting to 'normal' life could also have the effect of framing disabilities as problems to be overcome exclusively by the individual rather than by society.

It appears from the programmes sampled that the further one moves along the non-fiction / fiction continuum, the more licence is assumed to exist with regard to representations of mental illness. Thus while soap and reality TV attempt to present a somewhat realistic - if individualised and medicalised - account of these issues, fiction film, sitcom and cartoons are more likely to mobilise terms and images that are negative, politically incorrect and/or stigmatising. This is reflected not only in the proliferation of casual references to insanity mentioned above but also in terms of how mental illness is visually represented.

For example, in American drama series "Heroes" (Channel 6), a woman with a split personality is portrayed as two different but identical-looking people, one trying to kill her husband and the other trying to protect him. It is arguable that these highly mis-representative, simplistic images of a personality disorder do little to enhance understanding of these conditions but are used rather for dramatic effect. The film "Exorcist: the Beginning" (2004), which was captured in the sample, traded in yet another stereotypical representation of mental illness, as connected to evil.

In this film, when Father Merrin travelled to a sanatorium in Nairobi, he was confronted by horrific images of people wandering the halls, bewildered, frightened and distressed. The patient whom he had come to see was possessed by the Devil. Although such plots may allude to the historical demonisation of people seen as mentally ill, this staple of horror films may also reinforce the stereotype of people with mental health difficulties as 'touched' by the Devil or by evil forces.

iv. Learning disabilities in news and current affairs

In the sample recorded, most references made in news and current affairs programmes to learning disabilities, both on radio and television, related to the deportation of a six-year-old boy with autism, Great Agbonlahore, back to Nigeria and to inadequate provision within the educational system for autistic children. With the exception of a couple of instances in which the issues were discussed in more detail on chat shows or in current affairs programmes, these items tended to be repeated over and over as news headlines (on some days, on an hourly basis). This repetition may have helped create the impression in the quantitative data that Irish broadcasting devotes a relatively large percentage of airtime to learning disabilities.

The only reference made in newscasts to specific discourses on learning disabilities related to speculation that Great Agbonlahore, if deported back to Nigeria, would be treated as an 'outcast' or as a 'voodoo child who is possessed'.

The Disability Act 2005 was mentioned only once in the sample and this reference was in relation to learning disabilities. The subject arose on "This Week" with Gerard Barry and Joe Little (RTÉ Radio 1), following a complaint made by the father of a man with Down Syndrome to the Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly. Ms. O'Reilly was interviewed on the show about the inertia among public bodies in implementing the Disability Act since it became law two years ago.

Finally, in an episode of TV3's magazine programme "Xposé", Keith Duffy and his wife were interviewed about coming to terms with their daughter's learning disability. This format tended to lean more toward the personal and the individual rather than the political or the social but nonetheless represents an important development, whereby media celebrities are actively de-stigmatising and raising awareness about learning disabilities.

v. Learning disabilities in fictional genres

References to or representations of learning disabilities occurred infrequently in fictional genres. However, Down Syndrome was a major plot theme in two episodes of "Eastenders" (RTÉ 1) within the sample. In this subplot, Honey discovered she was pregnant and was concerned that she may have another baby with Down Syndrome. She was also concerned that, if her second baby did not have Down Syndrome, herself and her partner might treat them differently. When questioned by Pat, she revealed that she was worried people would think they should have been more careful or that people would assume they did this to try and "make up for Janet, you know, to have a 'proper' baby". She was also worried about putting her husband Billy through the same ordeal all over again and feared that she may lose him.

As the post-natal depression subplot of "Coronation Street" demonstrates, soaps frequently play out emotional crises in highly dramatic terms. However, these episodes of Eastenders did succeed in capturing a wide range of social responses to and fears about Down Syndrome. It is also significant that these fears and prejudices were ultimately dispelled by Pat's pragmatism, which convinced Honey that she had a happy, functional family. Because the episode covered a range of different responses - albeit mostly imagined by Honey - it is difficult to see this representation of Down Syndrome as fitting into any one specific discourse. Anyone who came into contact with Honey and the baby, however, made no reference to Down Syndrome and treated them both as they would treat any other mother and baby.

vi. Physical disability in news / current affairs

Images of or references to individuals with physical impairments were less frequent in non-fictional than in fictional programming. Because advertisements were not included in the sample, there were no road safety campaigns showing survivors of car crashes in wheelchairs or undergoing rehabilitation. Reference was often made in passing to specific impairments such as spinal injuries or Parkinson's disease but most of these were cases of fundraising events being advertised on community radio. Indeed the most specific references to disability occurred in the context of community radio.

For example, one show broadcast on Connemara Community Radio involved a discussion about a planned programme looking at health services and disability. The presenter explained that the programme was part of a national campaign to promote the rights of older people and that its purpose would be to inform them about medical cards, long-term illness schemes, payment of carers, public health nurses, home care, home carer grants, aids and appliances and nursing homes. There then followed quite a lengthy discussion about the benefits of community radio for disseminating important information to citizens.

In the sample there were two non-fiction television programmes which dealt explicitly and in detail with long-term illness. These were RTÉ1's "The Hospice" and an edition of "Seoige and O'Shea" on RTE 1, in which a young woman with cystic fibrosis and her father were interviewed. In "The Hospice", several patients with terminal illnesses were interviewed. They spoke about how they were coping with long-term illness and praised the staff of the hospice for their medical and emotional skills. In the episode analysed, two of the patients died. These touching stories of bravery and good humour were inspiring portraits of individuals faced with the inevitability of death. They also provided a welcome counter-discourse to the recent scandals in the news media about the inadequacy of services in private nursing homes. However, there was no discussion about why terminally-ill people need to be institutionalised or whether this is desirable, nor was any reference made to the possibility of dying at home or caring for a dying relative at home.

Thus, although the programme itself presented positive and inspiring images of disability as well as a caring and sensitive approach to terminally ill patients, it is arguably part of a wider discourse which presents medical institutionalisation as an inevitability. As is the case with so many other conceptualisations of disability and illness, the impairment or illness is regarded as the problem and it is dealt with by a dedicated medical system, i.e. in a way that requires minimum change or adaptability on the part of the wider society.

In the "Seoige and O'Shea" interview with a young woman with cystic fibrosis, a number of different discourses on disability were evident. Interestingly, both father and daughter commented on how she never sought special attention compared to her siblings and how she never received it. Her father said she was treated the same as the others and was never pampered or let off chores because of her illness.

The interviewee spoke at length about the things she had to do in order to compensate for her illness and live a normal life:

"Everything took planning, if somewhere had stairs I had to think - god I hope there's a lift 'round here you know..."

This is a positive, admirable and empowering approach to disability. However, viewed in the context of the social-versus-medical model of disability, cystic fibrosis is considered more an illness than a disability here and it is the illness that is seen to disable rather than deficits in the social infrastructure.

Naturally medical intervention improves the quality of life for many disabled people and in many cases saves their lives. It is also desirable that people with disabilities should be fully integrated in a pluralistic society.

However, many media stories tend to confirm the notion that there is a 'normality' yardstick against which people with impairments should measure themselves as well as an archetype or template of what constitutes a 'normal life', which they should strive to achieve.

What these discourses tend to overlook is that, particularly in such a technology-driven age, all citizens are located on an ability-disability continuum, depending on a plethora of factors such as their age, weight and level of fitness and access to and ability to use cars, computers, DVDs, remote controls, alarm systems, mobile phones, credit cards and the internet (many of which are determined, in turn, by socio-economic income, level of education, etc.). There is a sense that, beyond the individual families affected, society does not have to change or adapt in any way - the impairment is dealt with by the medical system, while the disability is dealt with by individuals and their families.

This is not to suggest that the media conspire with government or the medical profession to keep disability within easily managed areas of responsibility. Indeed, it is important to acknowledge the significant role that the media's own codes and conventions play in the construction of particular narratives or discourses. What makes a good story, whether real or fictional, from a producer's perspective is often a strong individual overcoming difficulty.

Thus, an interview with an individual person with a disability or their family will inevitably facilitate a different type of discourse than a chat show involving a number of experts or numerous spontaneous callers: the former tends to focus on a personal narrative, while the latter generally encourages a more public or political debate.

vii. Physical disability in fiction

Physical impairments, genetic conditions and long-term illnesses only received any kind of sustained media attention in genres such as the hospital drama and, to a lesser extent, crime shows and cartoons. The hospital and crime dramas in the sample that featured disabilities demonstrated a fascination with the obscure and the macabre. However, it is important to acknowledge the role played by the specific codes and conventions of different media genres in shaping particular discourses.

The hospital drama, for example, has become such a popular and ubiquitous format that it has become essential to deal with increasingly rare psychological, physical and genetic conditions and to play on the audience's knowledge of and interest in physiology, pathology and medicine. For example, in an episode of "All Saints", an Australian hospital drama broadcast on TV3, a 17-year-old girl was diagnosed with a rare condition called AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome).

Taylor looked like a female but because her body was insensitive to male hormones, she had not developed a vagina or uterus and would have to have internal testicles removed. In addition to the obvious interest that insights into such a condition might evoke among audiences, there was also the added dramatic twist that Taylor's mother knew about her condition since she was four and tried to protect her from it.

The discourse of the freak was both rehearsed and critiqued in this programme. When Taylor's condition was first revealed by her consultant to the other doctors, they asked "Is it some sort of birth defect?" and "Any other abnormalities?" A doctor explained to Taylor that what she had was a "genetic glitch" but that it didn't change who she was. The same doctor also commented that, technically, her lack of male hormone "makes her a superwoman". When Taylor discovered that her mother knew all along she was outraged. She screamed, "You knew I was a freak! How could you do this to me?" and to her doctor, "Maybe I could have a freakectomy when they take my testicles out!" Although the doctors were critical of Taylor's mother for withholding this information from her and thus reinforcing her perception of self as taboo or unmentionable, they also mobilised medical discourses of 'abnormality' when talking among themselves.

In an episode of "Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit", also broadcast on TV3, a student was kidnapped who had Turner's syndrome which, it was explained, made her appear much younger than she was. A classmate described Janie as "a freak" and said that "kids her own age don't want anything to do with her". Her friend also explained to the police that "Janie gets picked on they think she's a geek". Because, it was explained, Janie was not developed physically and had problems connecting with children her own age, she was constantly referred to by the police, her teachers and her grandfather as 'vulnerable', 'delicate' and 'needing supervision'.

In an episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (Channel 6), it was revealed that a scientist had been conducting tests on innocent victims and this plot led to a series of 'freak images': when the police tracked down his victims, they were revealed to be a dead woman who had been given an eye implant and injected with a degenerative disease, a homeless man who was lobotomised and was missing an eye and a pair of Siamese twins in captivity in the scientist's laboratory, one of whom was already dead.

Finally, in a scene from American lesbian drama "The 'L' Word" (Channel 6), a female character wrote the word monstrosity on a piece of paper and imagined a carnivalesque scene in which characters' faces were disfigured to look like pigs. Images of disability played for comic effect were evident in two episodes of "The Simpsons". In one, there was a brief appearance by a robot in a wheelchair called Arty the Crippled Robot. The other featured a criminal with one arm, although this disability was never referred to. While "The Simpsons" trades in ironic stereotyping, featuring characters such as Apu the Indian storekeeper and Cletus the slack-jawed yokel, it is arguable that stereotypes, whether they are straightforward or ironic, still reinforce a particularly limited and limiting range of images of people with disabilities. Finally, while not all of the freak imagery described here relates directly to disability, it reinforces the notion that deviation from an imaginary norm is unacceptable or to be feared.

viii. Alcoholism and addiction

The preoccupation with alcoholism and drug addiction in the sample deserves particular mention. The categorisation of substance addiction as a disability is not as evident to most people as is, for example, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy. Much of the disagreement or confusion about addiction's status as a disability appears to stem from divergent understandings of its causes. In the non-fiction television programmes that dealt with this theme in the Irish context, much attention was given to the social causes of substance abuse and its links with depression, stress and increased prosperity (see above).

In the drama and reality TV programmes that were captured in the sample, however, a significant counter-discourse emerged, in which addiction and substance abuse were framed either as genetically inherited or as the behaviours of selfish and irresponsible individuals.

For example, in an episode of the American drama series "Party of 5" (Channel 6), a teenage character called Bailey started drinking heavily and became irresponsible and out of control. Bailey's younger sister grew worried as their father (now dead) was alcoholic. From a dramatic perspective, Bailey's behaviour opened up old wounds and memories for all members of the family who variously struggled to remember or forget the details of their father's alcoholism. Implicit throughout the entire programme - played out through the anxieties of the younger sister - was that Bailey's alcoholism had been genetically inherited. This was confirmed rather than refuted by the older brother when he finally talked to his sister about the problem. He explained, "Even if Bailey did get the alcoholism from him, Dad couldn't help that...any more than Mom could help giving you her music". In prioritising a medical / genetic rather than a social model, this discourse did not address the role played by social problems in alcohol addiction.

In two episodes of "Judge Judy" (TV3), young working-class women were put on the stand for abusing drugs and alcohol while pregnant or caring for their children. Similarly, the treatment of addiction here focused on the individuals rather than on the socio-economic environments in which they had become substance abusers. Judge Judy adopted a judgemental, moralistic and ultimately unsympathetic approach to these women, framing their addictions as manifestations of selfish and irresponsible behaviour rather than as disabling conditions caused by complex psychological and sociological factors. This discourse of addiction as individual weakness was further consolidated by an item about David Hasselhoff in TV3 magazine programme "Xposé".

Hasselhoff's daughter videoed him drunk in an effort to encourage him to stop drinking and the video was released on the internet. The home-movie footage of Hasselhoff drunkenly consuming a sandwich and slurring his words was overlaid with the pleadings of his daughter, who said "it's not fair that you are doing this to your family" and "tell me you're going to stop drinking". While it is arguable that the emotional damage wreaked by substance addiction on families means that it is rarely viewed with the same sympathy or understanding as other disabilities, this focus on the individual serves to further consolidate a discourse of alcoholism / addiction as a personal psychological weakness or personality flaw rather than a symptom of childhood trauma, relationship dysfunction or depression.

Dominant social discourses on alcoholism both reflect and influence how governments, health practitioners and educators address both alcoholics and the treatment of alcoholism. The treatment of addiction by American television dramas - as a problem of the individual - differed radically from how it was treated by Irish radio chat-show and current affairs programmes - as the symptom of a range of other social problems.