Objective: To investigate attitudes towards schizophrenia and people with schizophrenia presented in YouTube videos.

Methods:
We searched YouTube using the search terms “schizophrenia” and
“psychosis” in Finnish and Greek language on April 3rd, 2013. The first
20 videos from each search (N = 80) were retrieved. Deductive
content analysis was first applied for coding and data interpretation
and it was followed by descriptive statistical analysis.

Results: A total of 52 videos were analyzed (65%). The majority of the videos were in the “Music” category (50%, n = 26). Most of the videos (83%, n = 43) tended to present schizophrenia in a negative way, while less than a fifth (17%, n 
= 9) presented schizophrenia in a positive or neutral way. Specifically,
the most common negative attitude towards schizophrenia was
dangerousness (29%, n = 15), while the most often identified positive attitude was objective, medically appropriate beliefs (21%, n 
= 11). All attitudes identified were similarly present in the Finnish
and Greek videos, without any statistically significant difference.

Conclusions:
Negative presentations of schizophrenia are most likely to be accessed
when searching YouTube for schizophrenia in Finnish and Greek language.
More research is needed to investigate to what extent, if any, YouTube
viewers’ attitudes are affected by the videos they watch.