OUGD501: STUDY TASK 3 // CONSTRUCTING THE OTHER

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2482751/Left-handers-likely-psychotic-Study-finds-strikingly-higher-chance-suffering-schizophrenia.html

The article chosen, displays a sense of othering, alienating a larger majority of the population. The article, from the Daily Mail, 1st of November 2013. The article, 'Left-handers 'more likely to be psychotic': Study finds they have 'strikingly higher' chance of suffering schizophrenia’ Which goes on to make bold statements such as 'Left-handers are more likely to develop psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, than mood disorders, research suggests’ - This statement is completely othering an entire section of the population, people who write with their right hand. The blind ignorance conveyed in the othering of right handers suggests that only people with who write with their left hand are more likely to develop some sort of metal instability. '10 per cent of those being treated for bipolar disorder or depression were left-handed – a figure much more in line with the rate of left-handedness in the general population.’ Surely, the other 90% percent of those who are being treated for a bipolar disorder or depression are infact right handed. The article also writes, another blind statement "Left-handed people have a ‘strikingly higher’ chance of suffering from schizophrenia, research suggests. ...A study revealed left-handers accounted for 40 per cent of those with the mental illness.” Which also supports; those who write with their right hand have been othered, as even in the statistic displayed, there is a larger proportion of the percentage unaccounted for, the right handers. So, 60% of people with mental illness are right handed. 

You could also argue that in this article, they are also othering the stable-minded left-handers. It doesn’t give a proportion of mental illness rates to the number of left handers. These statistics which they’re dug up are completely out of context, holding little relevance because The Daily Mail have othered the, what I assume to be, the majority, the stable minded proportion, of the left handed population.