By: Zina Miqdadi
The topic of mental illness is a shadowy one for the average American—it is something that many people vaguely know about, but do not fully comprehend or understand. We are familiar with the various scattered statistics we see on the news, or maybe we’ve come across a book, movie, or any form of media that mentions one of the many conditions and disorders that fall under the umbrella of “mental illness”.
But, in our society, mental illness is not usually discussed clearly or in depth. Often, the first time the average person is exposed to or has an informational discussion about a mental illness, it is because they, or a close family member or friend, have been diagnosed with one. Even close family members may not have an adequate understanding of what a relative is going through, and that often creates a stigma or ignorance of the subject.
And because a significant portion of the population will experience at least one mental illness in their lifetime—twenty percent of American children are diagnosed a year, and almost nineteen percent of the total American adult population are also diagnosed in a year—the lack of awareness concerning mental illness is a serious problem in society.
Not surprisingly, media is one of the biggest contributing factors to the growing stigma against mental illness. Research done by Hocking in 2003 found that many of the negative opinions the public holds against people who suffer from mental illnesses are shaped by exposure to the mental illness from media . Books, movies, and television are all factors that can contribute to a person’s changing opinion on how they view mental illnesses, and so the credibility of this representation is entirely dependent on stressing that only accurate representation of mental illness in media is accounted for. However, this is not always the case.
The misrepresentation of mental illness in media is incredibly damaging to the way society and public views people with mental illnesses. From the romanticization of anxiety and depression, to the mangled depictions of conditions such as schizophrenia, mental conditions are not always portrayed as accurately as they could be in the media. In fact, a study done by Otto F. Wahl in 1998 found that depictions of mental illnesses in media tended to be extremely inaccurate. Because of this frequent exposure to inaccurate depictions of mental illness in media, the public is conditioned to believe that these portrayals of mental illnesses are the truth, when, in fact, they are not.
For example, when mental instability is brought up in Hollywood (namely, in horror movies), it is most often in connection to insane asylums and straightjackets, both of which are overused clichés that do not have anything to do with most real illnesses. Straightforward, accurate, and diverse depictions of conditions like schizophrenia are few and far between. Violent and dramatized depictions of mental illnesses in Hollywood help contribute to many of the wrongful stereotypes held by Americans today. Such as the case is in Wonderland, a television drama from 2000 whose opening episode included a schizophrenic man who goes on a shooting spree in the middle of Times Square. Black Swan, a popular movie from 2010, also includes an inaccurate and dramatized portrayal of schizophrenia, according to Dr. Steve Lamberti, a psychiatrist.
Many lesser known mental illnesses are often displayed only in their extremes, for the sake of shock value, such as psychosis in Taxi Driver (1976) or borderline personality disorder in. And even common conditions, such as depression and OCD, aren’t always shown accurately. They are often oversimplified, played off as just a quirky character trait, or are introduced only to be “solved” or “fixed” by a romantic interest (which is not, incidentally, something that happens or occurs in real life). Monk, an Emmy-nominated television show, is an excellent example of how OCD is drastically misrepresented in media. The show often used OCD as a punchline for many of its jokes, encouraging the audience to laugh at the disorder, while simultaneously not showing any of the despair or terror that actual OCD sufferers have to go through.
When mental illnesses are depicted like this, it affects and warps the way we see and perceive real mentally ill people. People who have disorders that are villainized in the media often face a lot of stigma—for example, one of the most popular stereotypes about people with schizophrenia is that they are violent and unstable individuals with dangerous tendencies. In fact, research suggests that people with schizophrenia are more likely to be victims of violence, rather than perpetrators or instigators of violence. Other conditions, such as bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder, are often trivialized when people say things like “She’s so bipolar!” or “I’m so OCD!” to describe mood swings or perfectionism. It diminishes, trivializes, and undermines the struggles of actual people who have to deal with these conditions.
Mental illnesses are often very tough and difficult things to deal and live with, and to hear them used so flippantly in everyday conversation can be a bit of a slap in the face to the people who have to live with the ups and downs of their illnesses every day. With all of this stigma and the threat of not being taken seriously, many people with mental illnesses may be reluctant to open up about their struggles, and may face emotional isolation from their family or peers as a result.
One way that the negative stigma against mental illness can be combated is offering a better, cleaner portrayal of mental illness in media. If people with schizophrenia stop being portrayed as violent and dangerous individuals, and if people with OCD stop being portrayed as having “quirky” or “fun” disorders, public opinion of mental illnesses will improve and, hopefully, that will help erase the stigma and encourage the acceptance of people suffering from mental illnesses.
