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TV soaps hit home with health messages

Broadcasters must work with health promotion organisations to ensure advice is always available at the end of a telephone when TV and radio soap-operas run powerful health storylines, a helpline charity has said.

TV soaps attract millions of viewers. But broadcasters ‘often don’t stop to think about what people do at the end of the programme’, Broadcasting Support Services (BSS) project officer Danielle Lowy said. ‘When important health issues are covered you can’t just leave people high and dry.’

Lowy was speaking after research published in the BMJ reported a 17 per cent rise in attempted overdoses in the week after BBC’s Casualty showed an attempted suicide by using paracetamol.

But soaps also offer positive opportunities for health promotion, the BMJ added. People who watched the episode of Casualty were ‘twice as likely’ as non-viewers to know about the dangers of paracetamol poisoning.

High-profile health stories have featured recently in a number of soaps. Radio Four’s The Archers has had a long-running plotline on depression and BBC’s Eastenders has covered breast cancer. Few broadcasting companies, however, offer support or advice at the end of their programmes, despite claiming to have a responsibility to viewers and listeners.

BSS has been running helplines for Channel Four since 1990, when 900 viewers sought help after a dyslexia storyline in Brookside. Since then, more than 24,000 Brookside viewers and 13,000 viewers of Hollyoaks (which is aimed at young people) have received help on a range of subjects from domestic violence to testicular cancer.

Broadcasting Support Services has produced a Survivors’ Directory, offering advice for people who have experienced child abuse. For further information on the directory or other services, tel: 0161 455 1212.