Misinterpretation of mental illness in media

Posted November 2020

By Elizabeth Philbrick

Staff Editor

More often than not, the media represents mental illness negatively and affects the way society views it.

A common misinterpretation of mental illness is the character’s personality focusing just on their mental illness. Their personality revolves around their mental illness, when in reality, that’s not the case. These characters are able to have other interests, instead of focusing on the fact that they have anxiety all the time.

Another common misinterpretation is that the mental illness of the character just magically goes away by the end of the movie, because of a lover or because they believed it would go away. Of course, believing it could get better is something that works, but not within that second. Getting over a mental illness takes time, patience, and help from more than the new kid on the block.

Not only do these give a bad reputation to mental illnesses, the viewers start to romanticize the thought of mental illness. Having a mental illness is all of a sudden seen as cool or unique, so viewers of these movies start going around and saying that they have one. Mental illnesses used to be stigmatized, so those with one used to be scared to speak up about having anxiety or depression. Now, it's a cool trend.

Some movies with good representations of mental illnesses include Words on Bathroom Walls, Inside Out, Frozen, Donnie Darko, Perks of Being A Wallflower, and Silver Linings Playbook.

Other movies with poor representations of mental illnesses include Psycho, The Visit, Joker, and Split.