Why Do Tv Show Mental Illness

A man on the television show Wonderland who suffers from schizophrenia goes on a shooting spree in Times Square and later stabs a pregnant woman in the stomach. The show was criticized by many mental health groups, justifiably so. Even though the people from these groups make very good points in terms of mental health representation on the show and called for its cancellation or a possibly better treatment of the mentally ill, the show, even though it was struggling with ratings at the time, gets picked up for another season. The series continued to paint a bleak image of people with mental illnesses who will essentially never get better, which, of course, many mental health groups as well as others with these issues had a big problem with.

Olson, Sc.D., co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry. But “research suggests that mentally ill people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence.”” According to PsychCentral.com in an article focused on mental illness in media (primarily television) people with mental health issues are more likely to be abused than to be the abuser, which has been proved by multiple sources and is ultimately true. So why are television shows and other types of media perpetuating this rumor that people with mental illness are always violent and can’t behave like other people? I believe the simple answer is because having a character with an unstable mind creates some sort of ‘tension’ for the viewer and other characters. So. essentially, mental health issues are only shown to be so terrible and untreatable is for the sake of plot, and to create a certain tension-filled ‘immersion’ for the viewer. Many people are not fans of using mental illness as a plot device, yet it is still happening all over, and it is not just television, there are several books that do this as well. I’m not saying that having characters with mental health issues is entirely bad, because it isn’t inherently, but when ‘having a mentally ill character’ turns into ‘this character has schizophrenia so he

These harmful depictions of people who suffer from mental illness only serve to fuel the stigma surrounding them, and they are usually only included in media for the sake of tension and constant drama. Or it might be used to pull a laugh out of people, which, an example of this might be someone who is struggling with depression offhandedly mentioning they might kill themselves in an apathetic way. And yes, people laugh at this, because most people take something like that as a joke, because it is frequently written as one. I am not completely blaming the audience here, in fact, I’m not blaming them at all, I place all of my blame on the writers and directors of these shows and movies. The audience is just manipulated into believing what the writers tell them is