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Kaylee Guerrero

English 103

Professor Kirkley

20 July 2017

Mental Illness Misrepresentation in the Media

We live in a world of misunderstanding of things, places, and people. A world of made

up thoughts, opinions and so much misrepresentation especially of what surfaces the media. One

thing that is constantly misrepresented in the media is mental illness. The sad truth is that most of

mass media views mental illness a either the people diagnosed are crazy, childish or sadly, it is

beautified. Furthermore, the most common ones that are viewed this way are the most diagnosed

which are depression and anxiety followed close by is bulimia and anorexia or simply an

obsession over ones body. In an article by Kirstin Fawcett, an author of How Mental Illness is

Misrepresented in the Media from U.S. News, talks about how mental illness is constantly

misrepresented in the media, why people look at mental illnesses as a terrible things and what

can happen from it. Aaron Levin, author of Media Cling to Stigmatizing Portrayals of Mental

Illness from Psychiatric News, describes how the media also stigmatizes mental illness and how

mentally ill people are more than likely to be involved in an act of violence. In the movies Perks

of Being a Wallflower and Split, the directors portray two different types of mental illnesses. For

Perks of Being a Wallflower, it has talks about suicide and depression all over and puts a

negative stigma on those people with it, but brings awareness of teens with depression. Whereas
Split portrays a man with dissociative identity disorder and brings a negative stigma on these

people

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suffering as being violent. I read an article by Anne-Sophie Bine author at The Atlantic, Social

Media Is Redefining Depression Bine explains how social media, in a nutshell, beautifies

mental illnesses especially depression and anorexia/bulimia. Lastly, I dove into a few more

articles and a few videos that explained the misunderstanding of people with mental illnesses.

Author, Elyn Saks, had a TED Talk about her struggle with Schizophrenia. She explains what

Schizophrenia is and how it feels like a shatter of the brain. In a nutshell, Saks explains that she

still has Schizophrenia but she has learned how to cope with it. In another article I found by an

Association of Mental Health in Oklahoma, the author, Matt Gleason, digs into how Orange is

the New Black, one of his favorite shows, has a portrayal of mental illness of a woman called

Crazy Eyes. Her character has given a mainstream portrayal on mentally ill people that are in

prison for their mental illness. Gleason also pulls out statistics how the media portray mental

illness in the wrong way. Lastly, in a scholarly article written by Heather Stuart, she explains in

her article how the media has portrayed a view on society on how mental illness works. For

example, mentally ill people are dangerous, criminals, and always unpredictable. Also, she

explains how the media has basically forced certain treatments on these certain people to provide

overdramatic-ness to them. These articles, videos and movies all show how mental illness in the

media is entirely misrepresented for all of the wrong reasons. By this, they have provided so

much hatred and arrogance towards these people who can not control what has been given to

them. Mental Illness is not a joke or to be taken in a light matter. It needs to be taken seriously
and not frowned up upon or to be joked around by the media because it influences into our

society in a terrible way by making it a overly beautiful or negative facade.

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To begin with, mental illness is constantly misrepresented in the media. Whether that be

news, movies, tv shows or talk radio, people misread them and think of them as not humans.

From How Mental Illness is Misrepresented in the Media Fawcett dives into explaining how

the media is misrepresenting mental illness. From Fawcetts point, she says, Research also

suggests most media portrayals of mental illness are stereotypical, negative or flat-out wrong

meaning many people gain an unfavorable or inaccurate view of those with psychological

disorders simply by skimming a few sentences or picking up a remote control (Fawcett). Media

has a tendency to make mental illness a bad thing and that they are un-human like and often seen

as prone to violence, they look different, and or they are childish or silly. Often, directors in

movies will portray their actors as someone with mental disabilities. Fawcetts example was the

movie Homeland and actress Carrie Mathison played a role as a bipolar woman and in Silver

Linings Playbook Bradley Cooper also has bipolar and was released from a psychiatric facility

before connecting to a woman who also dealt with mental issues after the death of a husband.

Moreover, media not only portrays most characters in these movies as bad people but a lot of

these movies in their scripts use the wrong medical terminology by using schizo, psycho, and

lunatic. This kind of derogatory language stigmatizes mental illness as well as putting

discrimination on them. In addition, there has been many advances in technology to understand

mental illnesses, the media is still out there and stuck in the old ways of not understanding

mental illnesses. If media doesnt improve their understanding on mental illness, the
mistreatment of these individuals will get worst. In Heather Stuarts, Media Portrayal of Mental

Illness and its Treatments she provides numerous examples on how different forms of media

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provide society with the wrong portrayal of mental illness. One Id like to cover is the portrayal

of mental illness from the news itself. The main job of a newscaster is to provide society with

news and to sell it. Stuart states, Not every news account sensationalised, inaccurate or

negative. However, balanced news portrayals of violent incidents involving people with a mental

illness may be more vivid, anxiety-provoking and memorable (101). What Stuart provides us

with is what the news does to provoke societys attention and how they gear the minds of others

to think negatively towards a certain crowd of people. The least people can do outside of media

is try to get a better understanding on them and to see the media misrepresents these individuals

and one way that the media could stop portraying mental illness in a wrong way is by presenting

to society on a succeeding story of one with an issue and bring upon good views of these people,

but instead all media does is provide what the popular opinion wants or what society wants to

believe.

Next, media is notorious for stigmatizing mental illness. Anyone can go onto social

media such as twitter, Instagram, or tumblr and see images with depressing quotes and pictures

of the young generation using self harm on themselves such as cutting or having

anorexia/bulimia. The issue with this is that the younger generation is majorly influenced by this

and feel the need to repost or even will take it to the extent of trying it themselves. Not only is it

the young generation, girls are heavily influenced by these posts that surface the web. For

example, there are groups that are filled with tips on how to purge or how to not eat all day to
stay thin or sadly, become so ill from a ridiculously small size that you are hospitalized and then

sent to a facility. The media not only romanticizes mental illness, but they beautify it by having

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models on the front of magazines and being a size double zero. In addition to social media, many

movies romanticize mental illness like Perks of Being a Wallflower. In this movie, Charlie, the

main character, has PTSD after being hospitalized after his friend committed suicide. The issue

with this is that after this movie, many people came out and felt with the character. This movie

was a true representation about todays society because it bluntly shows how ones emotions will

usually have another feel the same even if they arent depressed, have anxiety or any other

mental illness one might have. Depression seems to have a different view in the media. In

Social Media Is Redefining Depression is a story about a girl at an international school in

Paris. She would always sit at her computer and look at pictures of the picture perfect girls

wishing she could look just like that. Now, where does a young girl get pictures of perfect girls

at? The lovely tumblr. As I mentioned tumblr above, tumblr is a very influential social media

filled with things that are inappropriate, picture perfect humans and depressing quotes. The

website is prone to evoke negative emotions onto their users to bring about a community that

went from never talking about depression, to educating themselves and finally where it still is;

everyone is talking about it and saying they are depressed. Even those people who are wannabe

depressed still feel the same emotions. Furthermore, when you type in the tag depression in

the search engine on tumblr, it clearly states, If you or someone you know is dealing with an

eating disorder, self harm issues, or suicidal thoughts, please visit our Counseling & Prevention

Resources page for a list of services that may be able to help (Bine). The problem is that before
tumblr used to be a place for photography and art and now it has turned into a place for people to

feed off of each-others emotions. Bine explains, Its dangerous to talk about wannabe

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depressives because we dont know for a fact that they are in fact wannabes, Laura says.

There are a lot of people that suffer (Bine). She touches up on the wannabe depressives

because they are another huge part of what media provides to us in the media. With this, the

wannabe depressed people do actually feel the emotions that a real depressed person would feel

and they end up saying Im depressed Im not alive inside and numerous other common

statements that, in fact, real depressed people do not state since they usually dont want people to

know. Depression or even feeling ones emotions from a depressed person is something that is

constantly tugged around media and sometimes plays off as a joke, but its not and its the

medias fault for slipping it into society one word, post and movie at a time.

Lastly, adding more onto the topic Id like to add in some things about Schizophrenia and

dissociative personality disorder. The first example I have is the movie Split. In this movie, a

man with 23 different personalities. Kevin, the patient, shows all of his different form to the

three girls he kidnaps. After trying to get out, two girls didnt make it while one did. His

psychiatrist who has kept his 23 personalities a secret came to where he lived and tried to get him

before going to his final form, a beast. This movie from the start portrays something called

dissociative identity disorder as violent. Although the movie has a great plot, its portraying a

negative stigma on to people with dissociative identity disorder. By portraying negative stigmas

on mental illness, it just makes society have the same viewpoint instead of open arms for these

people, its only hurting them. In another example, I found a video on Elyn Saks who is now a
professor at USC Law School as well as a person with Schizophrenia. Saks explains the troubles

she had going through Law School and how she discovered she had this overtaking disease. On

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her seventh encounter she was with friends working on a project for a class when she started to

babble, make no sense, followed by taking them on the roof and talking about the devil. Later on

when she moved schools to further her Law degree she had another encounter which put her in

the hospital. She was at the lowest point of her life and was in all at a complete loss. She decided

to make it her goal to live with Schizophrenia because as she explains that shes a human living

with Schizophrenia not a Schizophrenic and all she wanted was to better herself. Today, she is

happily married, wrote a book, is a Professor at USC Law School and how does she do it? Well,

she is in psychotherapy and four to five times a week and is not on medication. She also has a

support system of friends, family and coworkers that love and support her every step of the way.

Saks ends her TED Talk with explaining how media portrays mental illness. Furthermore, she

explains the reason why she didnt come out with Schizophrenia for a very long time because of

how the media stigmatizes it and how its reflected onto society in a bad way. There needs to be

more research on treatments for people with mental illness because with better treatment comes

better people. Additionally, there needs to stop being a criminalization of people with mental

illness. Did you know that LA County Jail is one of the largest psychiatric facility in the United

States. Lastly, she pleads that that media needs to keep providing society with movies on people

with mental illnesses but instead of focusing on just their diagnoses they needs to focus on them

as people with a mental illness sympathetically.

 In conclusion, the problem with media and misrepresenting mental illness is that it makes

its way into society and they end up having the same views as the media portrays it into society.

It needs to be taken seriously and not seen as the people that are considered different than

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normal society. After researching and understanding mental illnesses mixed with media, I have a

better understanding for them. Even though the media needs to stop stigmatizing all types of

mental illnesses ranging from depression all the way to schizophrenia in a negative matter, they

have an obligation to portray popular opinion onto society which is a huge problem reason being

that not all mentally ill people all are violent, childish, or crazy. Mentally ill people are not all

about their diagnosis, they are humans living with a diagnoses that they cannot control and need

to the time and energy spent on them to provide them with the proper care instead of leaving

them in jails where they are always criminalized. These people are still humans, just all of us and

are dealing with their own struggles, theirs are just a little more challenging and take a lot of

work to control or become better as well as more time and energy spent on them from the press,

entertainment industry and from society.

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Works Cited

Bine, Sophia-Anne. Social Media is Redefining Depression. The Atlantic, 2013 October 28.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/social-media-is-redefining-depressio

n/280818/

Fawcett, Kirstin. How Mental Illness is Misrepresented in the Media. U.S. News, 2015 April

16.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/04/16/how-mental-ill

ness-is-misrepresented-in-the-media

Gleason, Matt. Crazy Eyes & How Pop Culture Portrays Mental Illness. Mental Health

Association, Oklahoma, 2015 June 11.

http://mhaok.org/how-pop-culture-portrays-mental-illness/

Levin, Aaron. Media Cling to Stigmatizing Portrayals of Mental Illness. Psychiatric News,

2011 December 16.

http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.46.24.psychnews_46_24_16-a

Perks of Being a Wallflower. Stephen Chbosky, dir. 21 September 2012.

Saks, Elyn. A tale of mental illness. Youtube, 2012 July 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6CILJA110Y
Stuart, Heather. Media Portrayal of Mental Illness and its Treatments. Adis Data Information,

2006.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heather_Stuart2/publication/7299322_Media_Portra

yal_of_Mental_Illness_and_Its_Treatments_What_Effect_Does_It_Have_on_People_with_Ment

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al_Illness/links/54889f9a0cf289302e30b686/Media-Portrayal-of-Mental-Illness-and-Its-Treatme

nts-What-Effect-Does-It-Have-on-People-with-Mental-Illness.pdf

Split. M. Night Shyamalan, dir. 26 January 2017.