PTSD Coverage in the New York Times: Implications for the State of Mental Health in the U.S.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been portrayed in media in a skewed way such that the coverage overrepresents combat-precipitated trauma and neglects to communicate treatment options, which has direct implications for people with PTSD. Given the traumatic nature of contemporary events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of social movements concerning traumatic violence such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, this study examines if media coverage of PTSD has evolved to account for these changes. We specifically examined sourcing and framing in PTSD news coverage published by The New York Times from 1999 to 2020 using quantitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the coverage overrepresents combat trauma and neglects to communicate treatment options; favors men over women in sourcing of the news stories; and uses more thematic, compared to episodic framing. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.