Misrepresentation of Mental Health in the Media

Mental illness is widespread and it’s only increasing. When I noticed there were a lot of common themes in movies I watched that included someone with a mental illness of any type, I saw that they were mostly aggressive, dangerous, etc. Stuff that really seemed off to me because I know a number of people who suffer from minor to more severe cases of mental illness who weren’t as the media showed it to be. There was also the fact that the media only really showed one perspective of the mental illness, which wasn’t the actual experience of the person who suffered from it which interested me. So I wanted to look into it more and see what the reality was versus how the media portrayed it. According to Mental Health Awareness Blog, about 19% of the Adult population, 46% of teenagers, and 13% of children are affected by a type of mental illness a year. With this amount of people being affected, the right representation of mental health should be portrayed in popular culture right? With that in mind, there are so many ways for this to be implemented in a more secretive way into a movie or show that could easily blow over someone’s head or just subconsciously influence them. For example, you’ve seen people in straight jackets acting violent and hysterical in movies, and then people make it a Halloween costume, when in reality many people were tortured in insane asylums by being put in a straight jacket so they weren’t able to fight back or do anything. All of that sometimes even happened to people who were only perceived as “crazy” and/or weren’t even a little harmful.

One form of media that is more accurate and a better portrayal of mental illness is art. When talking about the media and mental illness, I believe you can’t only talk about what’s wrong but bring in a better solution or alternative for gaining information on the topic. That better alternative would be more specifically visual art, in terms of drawing, sculpting, painting, etc. In “The Connection Between Mental Illness and Creativity” by Caroline Keenan, she shows us how some famous artists actually showed some signs of mental illness through their art and since art is a form of basic self expression in a lot of cases, it is probably the most accurate source of information on their experience. Keenan says “Munch’s painting, titled Self-Portrait in Hell, is made to show his feelings on his life at the time as a man and an artist: a private hell” with the corresponding picture underneath :

-> Self-Portrait in Hell, Edvard Munch, 1903

This painting has a lot of depth to it, just not from a first glance alone. If you look and analyze it to the best of your ability, you’ll never really get a true meaning out of it, but still, you’ll get at least a feeling out of it. For example when I look at it, it’s a simple, but dark and contorted background, void of shading. While the actual self portrait is a nude, possibly meaning he feels exposed or weakened a lot. Other artists like most famously Vincent Van Gough who cut off his own ear, and made the iconic starry night while looking outside his hospital window, had suffered from mental illness that was shown in their artwork as well.

How can you or others make an impact or help reduce the stigma around mental illness? An article by Rafi Letzter called “The News Is Telling You a Distorted Story about Mental Illness” is really informative on how you might do this. Before doing this though, one of the main things to keep in mind is that mental illness is pretty common making it more normal, so normalizing it would be key to the overall goal of reducing stigma. One of Letzter’s points that really struck me was when he stated that “On the flip side, a group of researchers (including McGinty) showed in 2014 that positive stories about mentally ill people can reduce stigma and discriminatory attitudes, while increasing support for treatment” which would really help because with the right treatment they could get help and not have to suffer from their illness as much.

There are so many ways mental illness affects communities small and big, but what I would like to know is how this change will happen and how it can hopefully be normalized to the point where people won’t have to not only be affected by their mental health of which they cant control, but also won’t be affected by the media and social stigmas around it. More websites to help learn about this topic and examples of ways to help of educate [<-here->] (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wrj9TfKrxSYpJ7JoHiiRQ0W4q34H1Eq0yTN2Cr1VZrM/edit?usp=sharing)