A Textual Analysis of Newspapers, Madness, and the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since the development of news media in North America, representations of mental illness have been a preeminent feature of news stories. These representations are key to understanding the intricacies of Mad people’s history, their marginalization, and their disenfranchisement. This paper provides asylum researchers with a simple yet effective strategy for examining how Mad people were portrayed in the Canadian asylum era by applying a qualitative textual analysis method to examine newspapers’ negative representations of “mad people” who were inmates at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in Etobicoke, Ontario. Drawing themes from a cross-section of relevant newspaper stories, this paper identifies the ways in which Mad people were –and continue to be – projected and perceived and how that has – or has not – changed over time. As a result, findings work to counteract many damaging and false perspectives adopted by newspapers and challenge the common belief that Mad people are inherently dangerous and thus deserving of incarceration. Keywords: Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital; Mimico Asylum; Mad history; news media; post-structural textual analysis Une analyse textuelle des journaux, de la folie et l'hopital psychiatrique Lakeshore Resume Depuis le developpement des medias d'information en Amerique du Nord, les representations de la maladie mentale ont ete une caracteristique preeminente des nouvelles. Ces representations sont essentielles pour souligner les subtilites de l'histoire des Fous, leur marginalisation et leur privation de droits. Cet article offre aux chercheurs en droit d'asile une strategie simple mais efficace pour examiner comment les gens fous ont ete depeints dans l'ere de l'asile au Canada en appliquant une methode d'analyse textuelle qualitative pour examiner la representation negative des «fous» par les journaux (Personnes ayant recu un diagnostic de maladie mentale - avec ou sans garantie) qui etaient detenus a l'hopital psychiatrique Lakeshore, a Etobicoke (Ontario). Tirant des themes d'une section transversale d'articles de journaux pertinents, cet article identifie les manieres dont les personnes folles ont ete - et continuent d'etre - projetees et percues et comment cela a change - ou n’a pas change - au fil du temps. Par consequent, les conclusions permettent de contrecarrer de nombreuses perspectives prejudiciables et fausses adoptees par les journaux et de contester la croyance populaire selon laquelle les personnes folles sont intrinsequement dangereuses et meritent donc d'etre incarcerees. Mots clefs Hopital psychiatrique Lakeshore; Mimico Asylum; histoire folle; medias; analyse textuelle post-structurelle
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".