Munirul-Haq Raza | Contributor
Featured image: Mental illness is often represented as dangerous or criminal in television dramas. | Courtesy of Screen Rant
People with mental health illnesses are often depicted in film and television as either violent or unintelligent and unable to take care of themselves, or some combination of the two. This portrayal leads to negative consequences not only in the public perception of those suffering from mental illness but also in government policy and interactions with the criminal justice system.
A review by the Canadian Mental Health Association, or CMHA, highlights several studies focusing on how mental health is portrayed in entertainment and the media. “The mass media are a primary source of public information about mental illness,” the study concluded. “Media representations of mental illness promote false and negative images and stereotypes. There is a connection between negative media portrayals of mental illness and the public’s negative attitudes toward people with mental health issues [… as well as the] government’s responses to mental health issues.”
People with mental health illnesses are generally depicted as one-dimensional caricatures solely defined by their “madness,” as typically seen in crime dramas. There are some notable exceptions that try to expand representations of mental illness on screen such as The Aviator, based on Howard Hughes, who has OCD; A Beautiful Mind, based on John Nash who had schizophrenia; and Proof, a film about a mathematician struggling with mental illness.
The serialized drama Mr. Robot follows Elliot Anderson, a cybersecurity engineer who suffers from clinical depression and social anxiety disorder. The show does a good job of humanizing Anderson and not making his mental illness the center of his personality.
“When mental illness is presented as an individual’s only characteristic, that person becomes defined by the illness in totality, thus becoming inherently different from others,” concludes the CMHA review. Anderson is a person who happens to have anxiety and depression. He is multidimensional and the show doesn’t hinge on his mental illness.
Though Mr. Robot is only a television show, it’s a necessary step in changing how the public views mental illness. Presenting mental health issues through television, a normalized medium of consumption, makes mental health seem more common by association. This in turn affects how the government and other formal institutions react to people with mental illness. By creating positive representations of mental illness in the media, we can influence how mental illness is approached in the real world.
