Photography and Mental Illness: Feeding or Combating the Stigma of Invisible Pain Online and Offline

Abstract

Medical photographs and photojournalism have played a central role in creating a visual representation of illness since the nineteenth century. For some themes such as mental illness, photographs of a few exceptional cases have contributed to the stigmatization of a bigger group by depicting them as dangerous in a violent or depraved context. In the last years, digital photography and Internet have given patients and relatives the opportunity to represent themselves on a daily basis as normal people with an illness, fighting against stigmatization.