The Road to Research 

Through the journey of my data collection, I decided to have my topic surround some aspect of mental health. More specifically, the psychology behind mental health + film study. I wasn't entirely sure of where I wanted this project/idea to go, until I came across an article.

The Association Between the Release of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and Suicide Rates in the United States: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis was published by The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and was a massive study conducted in 2019 that analyzed the sudden increase of suicide rates in the months following the release of Netflix's 13 Reasons Why. Through intense analysis, they connected the release of 13 Reasons Why to an influx of suicide rates (mainly among teens), due to its graphic and potentially "glorified" portrayal of a suicidal teen. This piqued my interest, and soon I began to research more evidence to gather ideas. I was able to locate another study conducted by Savannah Marie Carter, a student at the University of Arizona. She completed her research by analyzing the representation of mental illness through stigmatizing language portrayed in popular teen dramas (TV shows) 13 Reasons Why and Atypical. This research was extremely useful, as I was able to observe her research gap, methodologies, and implications that led to the conclusion of her research. 

Since both of these past works compared film to negative societal effects, I wanted to conduct similar research as their results were extremely captivating. I slowly began to collect data, and initially discovered mental illness glorification and its negative effects on representation and varying audiences. I soon rejected this idea, however, due to the fact that my developing research question and methodologies were broad, confusing, and fostering unwanted bias. Through further peer review, I found this topic to be increasingly more difficult as I was trying to develop my methodologies to conform to TV shows since those were the most popular forms of media where I could obtain ample evidence. However, the implications within this methodology proved to be greater than the actual project itself, in which I needed to develop more cohesive thoughts, ideas, and execution. 

As I began brainstorming, I drifted away from TV shows and switched to popular teen movies, still classified as dramas. This was much more conducive to time constraints and accurate data collection. I also needed to narrow down specific mental health/illnesses, instead of leaving it broad and unspecific. In this instance, finding mental health portrayals in movies that correlate with one another is difficult to narrow down, as movie plots vary drastically. However, there is always a climax in movies that draw suspense towards the audience (usually an event that causes the main character to deal with the given situation) which sometimes exacerbates mental health issues. This led me to the analysis of coping mechanisms within popular teen movies, as I will be able to collect data by observing how the character deals with a trigger or "life happening." I will still be able to analyze the mental health of teenage protagonists, but I will be able to do so more effectively. I continued to add depth, in which I concluded the development of my methodology with the analysis of coping mechanisms over time. I was able to revise my research question into : 

How have healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms towards adolescent experiences changed over time in teenage coming of age films?

From here on, I was able to further develop the specific coping mechanisms I was looking for, and identify the specific decades I would be looking at. The specific coping mechanisms are listed below : 

My project includes the analysis of coping mechanisms in popular teen movies over the course of 8 decades (1950's to present). I will be watching two movies from each decade (one within the first five years and one within the last five years to encompass as much of the decade as possible), and using IMDb to locate these movies. As I watch the movies, I will record the timestamp in which I view the portrayed coping mechanism, and later compare/contrast the data gathered from each movie. Moreover, I am collecting data based on the evolution of cultures and ideas, rather future ideas or current concepts. You can see more details in my updated methodology document below!