MENTAL HEALTH IN FILM & TV

Film and television have been part of the entertainment industry for over a century, and throughout their history, they’ve evolved in ways that never seize to amaze, inspire, captivate and stagger their audience. The number of stories we’ve been told, the characters we’ve met and the places we’ve visited through the big screen are countless. We’ve fallen in love, felt enraged and felt gloomy, we’ve been fueled with excitement and, some of us, have even seen aspects of ourselves both in film and television. 

What once started with a few minutes of poorly edited and low-quality images, has now become something much bigger: a world beyond belief shown through endless possibilities when it comes to visual and sound effects, screenplay, production design and digital editing.

However, there’s a particular issue that doesn’t seem to have a parallel evolution since the first movie and pilot episode came out hundreds of years ago: mental health and the portrayal of its illnesses. 

Granted, there are a few that have shown great percipience and courage in the context of depicting the subject, but there are plenty of others that seem to be stuck in what little knowledge we had about mental health a long, long time ago. In fact, the National Library of Medicine has provided a guide to mental health motion pictures that depicts in a highly mistaken manner the reality of mental illness.

Only time can tell what the future of mental health in cinema and television holds. In the meantime, studies have been realized around mental health conditions in film & TV and we
know, for instance, that 1.7% of characters in popular movies show a mental health condition, and only 7% in television. Hopefully with time, these numbers will increase both in quantity and quality.

Visual data: presence of mental health conditions in film and television (USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, AFSP)

WORDS FROM AN ACCLAIMED CRITIC

Dr. Adriana Fernandez, an internationally recognized film critic, had a few things to say herself about the presence and evolution of mental health in cinema. 

“Film has always had an interesting relationship with mental health, and the subject of someone dealing with an illness always draws attention,” she said. “Mental health is always an interesting topic, although maybe not subtle. Perhaps what is sought is to portray the extremes within the mental health panorama.”

She then continued:  

“There are movies of all kinds. Cinema rather exacerbates everything, exploits anguish to make it more interesting. I'm not an expert in mental health, but I think that in cinema there is a tendency to make the most out of the striking.”

Portrait of Dr. Adriana Fernandez

Afterwards, she went ahead and gave us a few examples of films that deal with mental health issues:

“There’s Black Swan that talks about schizophrenia. In the same grouping we have Shyamalan’s Split (also Glass and Unbreakable). There’s also the psychotic element in other movies like Stephen King’s Misery and The Silence of the Lambs with Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”

TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE A RIGHT

Aside from the fact that the media often romanticizes and diminishes mental illness, the stigmatized concept these conditions are given can be unsettling to both the audience and the cast &. On-screen depression is usually shown as a never-ending river of tears, constant use of black colors to dress and surround the characters, anti-social traits and constant desire of death. Anxiety on the other hand, is represented as intense physical shaking, stuttering and uncontrollable fidgeting. Bipolar disorder has given itself a name: the character is having a nervous breakdown or a good cry, and then out of the blue bursts into laughter. 

Can these depictions of mental illnesses be any more inaccurate? Those disorders are only the tip of the iceberg, because in reality, numerous conditions are widely stigmatized.

No wonder people of all ages have such misconceptions about what mental health looks like. When a character is constantly criticized, called “crazy”, “insensitive” and, often times, the villain of the story, it’s only logical that the effect it will have on its audience is one of rejection, fear and avoidance. 

It’s time for the film and television industry to make a shift in their exposure of mental health matters, to soak up on the truth about the conditions millions of people suffer all around the world and make an accurate portrayal of what it actually means to deal with a mental illness. Until then, the stigma and stereotypes will only continue to grow.

Mental health continues to be a misrepresented and garbled issue in the showbiz industry, specially in film and television.