Media portrayal of mental illness may influence public stigma and service utilisation. Media, particularly the news media, has become omnipresent for mental illness information to the public. Most of the public's opinions and attitudes towards people with mental illness consume through the news media than direct experience. This study aims to explore prominent themes of news articles on mental illnesses in Malaysian online newspapers, which were collected from January 2017 to December 2021 using qualitative thematic analysis. Several keywords related to mental illness were used to seek news articles in the newspaper portals, and 86 news articles met the inclusion criteria. Results showed three significant themes identified - people with mental illness have undesirable traits, people with mental illness are a menace, and the risk factors of people with mental illness. Overall, the findings indicate that themes produced were stigmatising and derogatory towards individuals with mental illness by highlighting the negative characterisation of people with mental illness, naming them as a threat, and endangering others. These findings are essential for providing practical knowledge for media practitioners to report mental illness-related news. Therefore, this study suggested the need for improving the quality of mental illness media reporting in Malaysia.
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