Over half of the media and marketing industry shows symptoms of depression
A study of over 1,800 media and marketing industry workers has revealed 56% of workers show symptoms of depression, 20 percentage points more than the national average.
The Mentally Healthy study, conducted by Never Not Creative, UnLtd and Everymind, showed nearly one in five media industry staffers displayed severe or extremely severe symptoms of depression, compared to 12% in the national average.
I believe they are more depressed and anxious and the reason is that their product promotes anxiety and depression. The media is a “virtual reality” which shows a negatively-curated selection of horrible stories about society based around crime or social conflict. When they can’t find local horrors or conflict, they are increasingly able to import it instantly from overseas. I spent some of my journey to work today reading in the newspaper about a man who murdered his family in the US. Why? Reading and viewing stirs up a range of negative emotions which can only be fixed by turning to the people around you and realising they are nothing like the figures whose stories are portrayed in the media. Meanwhile, marketing professionals focus on stirring up status anxiety and generating false needs. The need to consume the toxic media product for professional reasons makes media practitioners depressed. I think that in the future, media consumption will be seen as having the same relationship to mental health that smoking has to physical health.