Running head: MENTAL ILLNESS AND THE PUBLIC 1

The Public’s Interpretation Of Mental Illness As Presented In The Media

Salvador A. Castillo

University of South Florida - St. Petersburg

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Abstract

The subject of mental health and those who are affected by it has been a subject of debate

over the last few years. Most of the human population is affected by mental illness, which is not

always born out of a traumatic experience. However, the main focus of news media when

pertaining to mental illness often veers towards the negative, and movies and television tend to

either misinterpret the truth about mental illness or only have their villains be afflicted by some

form of mental illness. This, in turn, breeds the idea in the general public that those who are

mentally ill are beyond help or not normal, making it so those with a mental illness in real life

actively avoid helpful treatment. However, there are a few ways in which the general public can

encourage those with mental health to seek proper help, like researching proper movies and

television shows portraying mental health and talking to those who live with mental illness.

Keywords: Mental illness, media, misinterpret

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The Public’s Interpretation of Mental Illness As Presented By The Media

When someone gets asked what they picture when they think of someone with mental

illness, the answers can often veer towards some heavily negatve depictions: a dirty and unkempt

appearance, isolated living, prone to sudden outbursts of violence, and being beyond proper

psychological help. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. According to the World

Health Organization, the number of people that will develop some form of mental illness

throughout their lives is, approximately, one in four. This means that most likely you’ve passed

by someone with a mental illness while walking down the street or at your favorite diner. And

though that number is staggering when put into perspective, the number of people who receive

proper counseling and treatment for their conditions is only an estimated 41%, according to the

National Association for Mental Health. Another misconception the general public has built up is

that those who have developed a mental illness have done so due to some traumatic event in their

life, thus damaging their mind into its current state. Again, this conclusion is also an erroneous

one. Most of the people who develop mental illness live their lives without any subsatntial

changes to their routine, only alloting some time to visit therapists and get a refill on any

medications they need. And the root cause for mental illness isn’t trauma. Though we may not

know the true cause for mental illness, we are aware that it develops due to a mix of genetic,

biological, psychological, and environmental factors that are present throughout a person’s life.

As a matter of fact, according to Carey’s article, one of the most recent examples of succesful

breakthroughs in the area of treatment of mental illness lies in those who are afflicted attending a

group meeting with others who have been living that same way. This not only allows them to

succesfully open up about their experiences, but it provides researchers with valuable insight into

the nature of therapy and mental illness.

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The general nature of mental illness isn’t something that is easily understood by the

general public, seeing how there is a sleugh of technical and medical jargon that can cause a

normal person to get lost in the conversation. It is for this reason that most people rely on movies

and television to get their information pertaining to mental illness. However, television news

broadcasts tend to focus more on the negative side of these conditions. Rebecca Shimkets of the

Carter Center believes that one of the main reasons for the propagation of misinformation on the

news is that journalists don’t have neither the time, the resources, or even the training to be able

to write a proper article about it. Then there’s also the fact that most movies often embellish and

exaggerate certain details about the true nature of mental illness. For instance, according to

RTOR.org editors Jay Boll and Veronique Hoebeke, the movie The Visit has been cited by many

audience members as simply using mental illness as a tool to scare the general audience.

Wikipedia has also cited the movie Split as contributing heavily to the stigma surrounding

dissociative personality disorder, seeing how the main antagonist is a man with dissociative

personality disorder, who has kidnapped three teenage girls and is threatening them with the

appearance of “The Beast”, an incredibly dangerous personality who ends up eating two of them.

It is these portrayals of a vulnerable individual as a danger to society and a liability to those

around them. These aren’t the only wrongful depictions mental illness in media, as even

television propagates wrongfu ideas about mental illness. The most prominent example is the

show Dexter, in which each of the villains is afflicted with some form of mental illness as the

series progresses, further spreading the idea that those who are mentally ill will eventually end

up snapping and lashing out at anyone around them.

This social stigma against mental illness has built up the ideas that those with mental

illness are unsafe to be around and should be regarded with extreme caution. However, this only
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causes the great majority of people who are diagnosed with mental health issues to actively avoid

treatment. We need only look at the situation in Flint, Michigan, as covered in the New York

Times, for proof of this. Out of a total of 96,448 people, only a measly 400 of them have been

provided proper mental counseling. Most of the city is experiencing heavy amounts of stress and

anxiety, yet nearly nobody seeks out the mental help they need. One of the residents of Flint who

were interviewed for the article claimed that she thinks “living in Flint will brand her as damaged

goods if she ever tries to find a job elsewhere”. Another citizen of Flint has reported that her

doctors have prescribed her Xanax, and that she takes it simply to get up in the mornings.

However, the wide-spread paranoia about the water crisis has caused many people’s anxiety and

depression to worsen, because they claim they don’t have the time or the money for a therapist.

This is explained in Chokshi’s forum discussion about health and income inequality as part of a

seemingly endless cycle where, because people are born into a poor family or circumstances,

they can never get the proper treatment they need. However, many attempts to procure aid for

Flint have been in the works, though one proposal for $5 million to be allocated to help the

psychiatric effort hasn’t gained any traction, though a separate aid package has been gaining

support in the Senate, though it doesn’t include mental health. But this is only one of the many

examples of people not receiving help. Out of the 41% of people who seek psychiatric health in

America, most of them only go once, with only a small number of people going back for further

therapy, and most of them only going to refill their prescribed medication.

There’s various methods as to what the general populace can do to help alleviate the

burden on those who do suffer from mental illness. And while it may take a while to cause major

stigma to completely disappear from society, there are quite a few immediate actions that would

make it better for the afflicted. For one, we could actively avoid using overly harsh, rude, and
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unfeeling terms to describe the demeanor of those people who require help. Emma Frankham,

from the National Alliance of Mental Illness, writes about how the news uses mental illness as

the describing characteristic of any individual on the news. Words like “nut”, “crazy”, “psycho”,

etc., and instead more neutral words and asking people to describe what they mean when

describing somebody as insane. Movies can aslo play a pretty big role on public perception of

mental illness. However, it falls to the public to look for the movies that are considered by many

to present an accurate picture of mental health. The movie Clean, Shaven provides a very

interesting take on schizophrenia, as in this one we focus on something that is more familiar to

schizophrenics: the use of cacophonous sounds, steadily rising within the main character’s head,

often causing him to break down in public. Another movie which portrays some very real

struggles that most people face when they’re suddenly released from a mental hospital and thrust

into the outside world and are expected to adapt is The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as the main

character has some serious hiccups on his road to reintegration into society. But there’s also the

possibility of the public taking action into their own hands and approaching somebody who has

been medically diagnosed with a mental illness, for a few reasons. Firstly, it provides both

parties with a beneficial opportunity: the diagnosed person gets a chance to talk about their

experience living with mental illness, and the person who sought them out gets to know first-

hand how those with mental illness would prefer to be treated and regarded by the rest of the

world’s population. Another factor is because, through the spread of real stories about mental

health, mental illness, and the troubles it can cause to those afflicted by it, the general public is

becoming more educated about the likelihood and reality of their chances of having met or lived

with someone with mental illness their whole lives. Although this wouldn’t resolve the problem

completely, as not everybody has easy contact with somebody who is mentally ill. For those
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occasions, the best-suggested course of action is to visit the websites of the World Health

Organization, the National Association for Mental Health, and the National Alliance on Mental

Illness. Whenever one hears about a new kind of mental illness and they don’t have enough

information to make an informed decision on the subject, they should look up the mental illness

on the database for each of the websites and read up on the causes, symptoms, and possible

treatments for said illness. This will allow for better communication with those who are

diagnosed with the illness and will allow you to treat them with a level of mutual respect that is

expected in everyday regular conversation.

The overall interpretation of mental health by the general public is one that has been

stunted due to the amount of misinterpreted and exaggerated information throughout the whole

of modern day media. However, with a push in the direction of learning at least the basics of

mental illness, this form of stigma can be steadily and systematically eliminated. This, in turn,

would have to be a joint effort between the general populace and their sources of information,

with citizens having to suggest, if not demand, that their sources use appropriate language and

information when covering the subject of mental illness. However, this doesn’t mean that we

must demonize or ostracize those who hold erroneous ideas about mental illness. We must

simply attempt to re-educate them as well as ourselves, and surely we can achieve a society

where we are no longer oblivious to the truth about mental illness.

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References

Boll, J., & Hoebeke, V. (2015, October 27). 6 popular movies that got mental illness

wrong. In RTOR.org. Retrieved from https://www.rtor.org/2015/10/27/6-movies/

Carey, B. (2018, November 19). When will we solve mental illness?. In The New York

Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/mental-health-

psychology.html

Chokshi, D. A. (2018, February 21). Income, poverty, and health inequality. In JAMA

Network. Retrieved from https://newsatjama.jama.com/2018/02/21/jama-forum-income-

poverty-and-health-inequality/

Covering mental illness in the news (2018). In Future of Personal Health. Retrieved from

http://www.futureofpersonalhealth.com/education-and-research/covering-mental-illness-

in-the-news

Frankham, E. (2017, October 23). Stigmatizing media portrayals: What can we do?. In

NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness. Retrieved from

https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/October-2017/Stigmatizing-Media-Portrayals-

What-Can-We-Do

Goodnough, A., & Atkinson, S. (2016, April 30). A potent side effect to the flint water

crisis: Mental health problems. In The New York Times. Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/us/flint-michigan-water-crisis-mental-health.html

Greenstein, L. (2017, December 20). The best movies on mental health. In NAMI:

National Alliance on Mental Illness. Retrieved from https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-

Blog/December-2017/The-Best-Movies-About-Mental-Health
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