Representation is necessary in making sense of complex concepts like
mental disorders. Research has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic
has caused depression and anxiety cases to rise, pointing out the
importance to represent these mental illnesses in the best way possible.
This paper aims to determine how visual communication influences
the destigmatization of depressive and anxiety disorders.
Through a corpus analysis composed of different types of representations
in media, it investigated the impact such representations can have
on the public.
The results indicate that negative connotations can be transmitted
by certain graphic codes, possibly reinforcing the discrimination and
stigmatization that already surrounds mental illness. These graphic
codes are likely to cause various effects like feelings of shame or
alienation in mentally ill individuals and cultivate fear as well as mistrust
in others.However, this research also highlighted a recent change in
the graphic codes used by communicators to represent depressive
and anxiety disorders through a more nuanced lens.
These types of representations are presented as a solution against
stigmatization along with other new tools, such as Stigma-Free Design,
developed to help designers see past the shared prejudices in hopes of
a more sensible and understanding representation of mental illnesses.