Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12229
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Kaufman J.
Campaign on Childhood Mental Illness Succeeds at Being Provocative
The New York Times 2007 Dec 14
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/business/media/14adco.html
Full text:
We have your son. We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives.
- Autism
So reads one of the six “ransom notes” that make up a provocative public service campaign introduced this week by the New York University Child Study Center to raise awareness of what Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, the center’s founder and director, called “the silent public health epidemic of children’s mental illness.”
Produced pro bono by BBDO, an Omnicom agency that worked on two previous campaigns for the Child Study Center, the campaign features scrawled and typed communiqués as well as simulations of classic ransom notes, composed of words clipped from a newspaper.
In addition to autism, there are ominous threats concerning depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Asperger’s syndrome and bulimia . The campaign’s overarching theme is that
12 million children “are held hostage by a psychiatric disorder.”
The public service announcements began running this week in New York magazine and Newsweek as well as on kiosks, billboards and construction sites around New York City.
“Children’s mental disorders are truly the last great public health problem that has been left unaddressed,” said Dr. Koplewicz, adding: “It’s like with AIDS . Everyone needs to be concerned and informed.”
In some quarters, however, the campaign has raised hackles as much as awareness. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a national grass-roots organization of children and adults, is circulating a petition asking the Child Study Center to end the campaign.
Kristina Chew, founder of the blog Autism Vox
“It’s rallied them around one issue, and these aren’t people who normally agree about treating autism,” said Ms. Chew, who lives in Bernards Township, N.J., and has a 10-year-old son with autism. She says her blog attracts 3,000 to 4,000 visitors a day; traffic is up a third since the campaign was introduced, she said.
“It emphasizes a lot of negative aspects,” she said. “To say that autism or bulimia has kidnapped a child suggests that these conditions are part of a criminal element. I’m not saying it’s easy to have an autistic child, but it could be framed in a more positive way.”
Vicki Forman, an adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California whose 7-year-old son is blind and nonverbal, learned about the campaign on Ms. Chew’s blog and said it made her distraught. “The idea of an autistic person being held hostage is a very disturbing and backward image,” she said. “Rather than promote public awareness, this reinforces stereotypes – that there is something damaged about the autistic person, something in need of a repair.”
According to Dr. Koplewicz, the campaign was inspired by filmed conversations of parents and children talking about life with a psychiatric disorder. “These families felt their children were trapped by their disorders,” he said.
John Osborn, the president and chief executive of BBDO New York, said the effort was intended to increase the sense of urgency about the diseases and encourage conversation. “It’s tricky because there are a lot of messages in the air, particularly at holiday time. That makes it a challenge to cut through the clutter.”
BBDO’s earlier ads for the Child Study Center – which included images of a child running happily through a sprinkler and a drawing of a child caught in a maze – “were wonderful, but they didn’t get this kind of attention from anyone,” Dr. Koplewicz said. “They were too pleasant and innocuous. That’s the reason we decided to go along with BBDO.”
He was further emboldened, he said, by the reaction of focus groups of women whose children have the disorders mentioned in the ads. “Everyone who participated felt the ads were informative,” he said. “While we knew the campaign was edgy and we knew it would be harsh and upsetting, the facts of mental illness are even more upsetting.
“I am disappointed. I thought the people we’d be arguing with are the people who believe psychiatric illness doesn’t exist” or those who believe children are being overmedicated, he said.
“I thought we’d be fighting ignorance. I didn’t think we’d be fighting adult patients or the parents of patients whose feelings have been hurt.”
Susan Etlinger of San Francisco is one such parent, but she maintains that hers is “not the P.C. outcry of an offended parent.”
“It’s a legitimate claim that children with disabilities are vulnerable enough as it is,” said Ms. Etlinger, whose 4-year-old son has mild autism.
“I think we need to take special care that they’re not further stigmatized.
This campaign characterizes them as a series of symptoms rather than as the unique people they are.”
Bennett L. Leventhal, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, said he understood the parents’ dismay.
“We live in a world where people are still defensive about having a psychiatric illness or having a child with psychiatric illnesses,” he said.
“But I think it’s a very bold campaign. I think the ads speak to the point that these are real diseases and if you don’t do something they can consume your child.”
Dr. Koplewicz said he had not considered jettisoning the campaign, but there was some discussion about dropping its two most controversial components:
the autism and Asperger’s ads.
He decided to retain the ads after conferring with colleagues whose attitude, he said, “was that some people would be upset but that we should stick with it and ride out the storm.”
“We’re going to see how it goes in New York,” Dr. Koplewicz said. “If it goes well, we’re going to go to four other cities.”
