Abstract
This chapter explores the extent to which journalists draw on long-standing mental health narratives when telling their stories about the “mentally ill” and, in particular, their tendency to depict the mentally ill as violent and dangerous. The chapter is divided into three sub-categories based on the perpetrators of violent crime committed against members of their immediate family. These were “fathers,” of which 24 articles were dedicated to the stories of 11 men; “mothers,” where 22 articles documented the stories of 24 mothers who harmed their children; and finally, “progeny,” where 58 articles presented 17 cases of sons or daughters who killed, or planned to kill, one or both of their parents. Despite differences in the way Australian journalists explain the violence depicted in these stories, particularly when the perpetrator was a female, they continually drew on mental health as an explanatory device to account for how and why these crimes took place. This provides evidence for a continuation of the confinement narrative presented in Chapter 1.