The Daily Mail does it again [Trigger Warning: Offensive body-shaming descriptions of a woman with mental health diagnoses]

I saw this yesterday on Rethink’s blog and it made me so so angry. Rethink Mental Illness is a great UK national mental health charity working to improve the lives of people with mental illness, including fighting stigma and discrimination. They’re right on the money here with their comments about the ‘faux concern’, the thinly-veiled misogyny, the insults about a woman who is unwell. Think about it this way, if she was diagnosed with a serious physical illness, would the article be framed as how rough she’s looking, or how brave / courageous she is? Would they even put her in the paper at all?

As ever, The Daily Mail have backtracked and since edited their article to cover their backs…

 The Daily Mail has published ‘cruel, unnecessary attack’ on actress diagnosed with a mental illness - Emily Lloyd

Her crime? Daring to be seen in public without full make-up and a perfectly matched outfit. The piece disapprovingly describes her as ‘dishevelled and downcast’, notes her ‘mismatched outfit’ and claims that ‘the last two decades have been less than kind to the Bafta winning actress’ who was ‘once a radiant and glamorous woman’.

The fact that this thinly veiled attack is dressed up as faux concern, makes it even harder to stomach.

The paper goes on the explain that Emily has struggled with various mental health problems over the years including schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder.

Rethink Mental Illness CEO, Paul Jenkins said: “This is a cruel, unnecessary attack. We can’t speculate on the current state of Emily’s mental health, but if she isn’t very well at the moment, this is the last thing she needs. To ridicule someone in this way, who is known to have a history of serious mental illness is breathtakingly insensitive.

Brilliantly, readers of the online version of the story have been overwhelmingly supportive of Emily in the comments section. One of our supporters got in touch with us to say a lot of the critical comments have been deleted and that aspects of the article have been changed since the original piece was published. A sign perhaps that the Mail realise they have overstepped the mark.

As an aside, this is what Emily has said about her mental health previously: “Mental illness is a funny thing. If you have a broken leg you can fix it, but with the mind it’s not so simple and there is a stigma attached to it. It can make you feel like a freak. There have been various diagnoses, though I don’t really like labels. I’ve tried different types of medication. One type made me put on weight and I had to diet hard to get it back off. Another other increases the risk of insomnia, though I don’t know if that triggered it. All these trials and tribulations have taught me not to take myself too seriously.”



Notes

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  5. nickdoesthings said: Holy shit people age. Daily Fail: delivering news that is not news.
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