Media’s Damaging Depictions of Mental Illness was written for Psych Central and seems pretty self explanatory.  Mental illness does not come off well in the media.  An example described in the article I never heard about was Wonderland.  The tag-line on this advertisement alone is a little frustrating as someone going into the mental health field.  It’s invasive language and harkens back to the negative impressions of mental health professionals.  The show apparently perpetuated the view that those with mental illness are prone to criminal behavior, dangerous to society, and violent.  One thing the article points out is how groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) criticized the series’s “theme of hopelessness.”  Something that would reinforce the view that those with mental illness should be separated from society since there is “no hope” that they will be able to “fit in” to society.  “Quotation marks” help me to point out possible absurdities…and quote directly from the article…you can figure out which is which.

We live in a world where media dominates.  Most people own a TV, computer, phone, mobile device (iPad, iPod, iDon’tKnowWhatElse), DVD player, TiVo/DVR, or some combination of all of the above.  Music, movies, TV shows, and books (though possibly to a dwindling extent) are where we get a LOT if not MOST of our information on any given topic.  If these sources portray mental illness as a dangerous and hopeless thing, then that is the assumption most people will operate off of.  Get those crazies off the street like they do in Wonderland, Law & Order, and CSI.  Also if you commit a crime, especially a “bad” one like a sexual crime or a crime against a child you must be crazy, a category we are willing to lump a LOT of people in from Jeffrey Dahmer to a depressed housewife (or househusband for that matter).

I wish I could say more but this article is pretty thorough.  Please check it out.  I may revisit it in a later post…we’ll see.