Vaccine Follow-Up, Mental Health

Sometimes I have the feeling that the good people of On the Media are producing that program just for me... Last week's episode served as more evidence of that, given their coverage of the retraction of the vaccine-autism article from The Lancet. OTM brought on the editor of The Lancet to discuss how the whole affair will change how the journal deals with the media and the scientific community. It's an interesting segment: A Shot of Reality.

It seems like the buzz about this retraction died out very quickly, which is a little disappointing. Like I said previously, it's hard to imagine the retraction really having much of an impact on people who strongly believe that vaccines have a link to autism, having this retraction out there in the mainstream media a bit more might have helped reach those people that don't have any opinion yet.

This past week OTM took a look at the proposed revisions to the DSM, which was one of the bigger health topics this week. OTM's take, The Art of Diagnosis, featured some interesting history of various conditions in the media - neat stuff which I certainly had never heard before. NPR Talk of the Nation (here) and On Point with Tom Ashbrook (here) also touched on the DSM changes and other mental health issues in the last week.

My work hasn't really focused on mental health, but one of the more interesting components of a health communication class I taught a few semesters ago was related to mental health. I think it's a fascinating area of work, I keep wondering why I haven't dug into it more directly yet... Perhaps in my next round of projects.

Finally, I wanted to point readers to Roxanne Parrot's blog: Talking About Health - Why Health Communication Matters. Roxanne's work is well-known to anyone working in health communication, and her blog will be a good way to keep up on what she's thinking right now. Definitely go check it out.