Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 2004, 11, 635–643 © 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 635 STARK C., PATERSON B. & DEVLIN B. (2004) Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 11, 635–643 Newspaper coverage of a violent assault by a mentally ill person The media is an important source of public information on mental ill-health. A man with a serious psychiatric illness attacked a minister with a knife at a Remembrance Sunday ser- vice in a remote, rural part of the Highlands, inflicting a severe facial wound. We aimed to identify lessons for the National Health Service (NHS) from the media coverage of the inci- dent and of a subsequent court case and NHS Highland inquiry and in addition to explore how newspaper reporters approached reporting such incidents. We searched local and regional, national Scottish, and the Scottish editions of three UK newspapers for relevant coverage. We also conducted structured telephone interviews with eight reporters who had attended the inquiry press conference. Most of the media coverage was associated with the assault and the court case, rather than the inquiry results. Only three of 10 inquiry recom- mendations were mentioned in any reports. Coverage largely dealt with identified short- falls, rather than proposed solutions. The NHS had made little comment in advance of the announcement of the inquiry results. Most of the newspaper coverage had already occurred. The NHS therefore limited its opportunity to influence newspaper coverage. The interpretation of the results is limited by the size of the study, but the coverage of such events forms part of the discourse on mental health in the media episodes and may have some affect on public perception of mental health issues. We conclude that, without pro- viding confidential information, the NHS should take a more active stance in providing information on the nature and treatment of mental illness in such instances, even in advance of court cases. Keywords: inquiry, media, mental health, risk perception, rural, violence Accepted for publication: 30 January 2004 et al. Newspaper coverage of a violent assault by a mentally ill person C. STARK 1 MBCHB MPH MS c MRCP sych FFPH , B. PATERSON 2 ME d BA ( H on) RMN RNLD & B. DEVLIN 3 1 Consultant in Public Health, Highland NHS Board Assynt House, Inverness and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, 2 RNT Lecturer, Department of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Stirling, Stirling, and 3 Communications Manager, Highland Health Board, Inverness, UK Correspondence: B. Paterson Department of Nursing and Midwifery University of Stirling Stirling FK94LA UK E-mail: b.a.paterson@stir.ac.uk Introduction Most people who suffer from severe mental illness live in the community. Assaults by mentally ill people have had considerable media coverage and may affect public views (Philo 1997) While services properly focus on striving to prevent such incidents, the response to such episode may also be important. People frequently overestimate the fre- quency of rare events and can tend to view incidents whose cause and effect may seem more easily and immediately established as representing more important health threats, even where statistics indicate otherwise (Slovic 1987). Adverse media coverage may thus have long-term effects on public perception (Berlin & Malin 1991) influence