Mental Illness in the Media: The Stigma That Creates Judgment

When you’re a kid, you don’t really question things that adults tell you. But somewhere along the line, when you get older and more mature, you look back and realize something that you didn’t even think about as a kid. I always knew my mom had two brothers and one sister, but it wasn’t until I got older that I realized I didn’t have any memories of her oldest brother. I don’t remember even contemplating his existence. Eventually I learned that he had some sort of mental illness. I’m not sure if it was ever properly diagnosed. I found out I had two cousins I had never met. After I learned this, I started overhearing stories about him; my mom would tell stories about him to her friends. Sometimes when you first learn about something, a new word or an event, you hear it everywhere. I started to learn more about him, but a few years ago he died. I don’t know what from and most of him is still a mystery to me. None of my aunts or uncles on my mom’s side ever talk about him in front of me. I don’t know it it’s just too painful or if they had shut him out when he was still alive. I know mental illness was treated much differently when they were growing up in the 1960s, but it still seems like they just let him go. Of course I don’t know the whole story, so who am I to judge? It is not just my family who is uncomfortable with mental illness.

Many people aren’t educated about what mental illness is and how it can affect people. Because of the lack of knowledge, judgments are made and this creates a stigma. Close your eyes and picture someone with a mental illness for a moment. What type of person came to mind? Was it an old homeless man who shouts random things? Was it a shaking woman on the bus who talks to herself? Or maybe a psychopathic teenage boy like the young murderers you see on crime shows? I know I am guilty of these stereotypes sometimes. If you thought the same way, it is not your fault that these images came to mind.

Media plays a large part in creating this stigma around mental illness. There are many different faces to mental illness, but all we see are the “crazy” ones. On the news we see violent crimes committed by those with mental illness. On television

(Legends of Horror) and in the movies, people with mental illnesses are usually there to take the role of psychopathic murderer or comic relief. Few portrayals are accurate though. In the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, Norman Bates has split personality disorder after he murders his mother and takes on her personality. He continues to kill his victims that come to the motel he owns. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a psychopath, someone like Norman, as, “A mentally ill person who is highly irresponsible and antisocial and also violent or aggressive.” Though this may be true, Norman Bates represents the worst kind of psychopath. We associate negative images with those with mental illness because all we see and hear about is the bad.

When mental illness or behaviours commonly associated with mental illness are presented as a character’s main personality traits…the illness or behaviour becomes the only way of defining that person and the main point of the story (Day & Page, 1986, cited in Olstead, 2002, cited in Edney, 2004). In such a one-dimensional depiction, people with mental illness become less than fully human: the mental illness becomes an enveloping identity (Edney 3).

Because we see mental illness in the media, we usually do not educate ourselves about what mental illness really is. The following table is from Dara Roth Edney’s Mass Media and Mental Illness: A Literary Review. The information about how the public sources information was gathered in the 1997 study, “Stigma Matters: Assessing the Media’s Impact on Public Perceptions of Mental Illness.” Hottentot cites the information you see below from the results of the study.

Popular Sources of Information about Mental Illness
Combined: TV, news, magazines, shows	70 %
Newspapers	58 %
TV news	51 %
News Magazines	34 %
TV talk shows	31 %
Radio news	26 %
Other magazines	26 %
Internet	25 %
Non-fiction books	25 %
Talks shows on radio	18 %
Women’s magazines	18 %

(Edney 2)

As you can see, many of the sources that are readily used by the public are not the most reliable. Like most people, I don’t actively search for accurate information on mental illnesses, so knowledge is absorbed through sources I already use. Though the information may be accurate, what is being portrayed are the interesting stories about people with mental illnesses, not the majority of real cases. Mass murders will make headlines, but they are not good representations of mental illness because they make up a very small percent. In a 1993 study by Glasgow University of 562 newspaper articles that contained some reference to mental illness, it was found that 62% of the articles were about violence (Edney 3). “Yet according to Monahan (1996), only 3–5% of violence in the United States is actually committed by someone with a mental illness” (Edney 3).

These negative associations with mental illness have serious impact in society. In the article “Cleaning Up OCD Stereotypes,” by Kacey Deamer, Deamer touches on ways the media influences stereotypes. “If done correctly, the media can help improve awareness of such illnesses. However, an incorrect portrayal can create a misunderstanding about…disorder[s], as well as offend those who have…[mental illnesses].” In the same article, Professor Bill Hudenko of Ithaca College agrees. “Hudenko…feels strongly that the media ‘absolutely’ affects society’s perception of OCD and mental illnesses in general. He has seen clients who have self-diagnosed and have self-treated incorrectly based on what the media has depicted.” If the media have this much impact on the way we see mental illness, they should use their powers for good by trying to make the portrayals accurate and positive. There is one TV show that did this.

One of the few examples of an accurate and somewhat positive representation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is on the TV show Monk. The main character Adrian Monk has OCD that was brought on by the murder of his wife. He is able to lead a productive life, with the help of an assistant, as a detective consultant for the San Francisco PD. Monk’s extreme attention to detail leads to solving a crime in every episode. The executive producer of Monk has personal experience with OCD and the

(Mediatvzones.blogspot.com)

actor Tony Shalhoub, who plays Adrian Monk, did research for the role (Deamer). “The Anxiety Disorders Association of America has supported Monk and its help in increasing awareness. According to an article in Variety, ADAA CEO Jerilyn Ross said, ‘Even as a comedy, the show demystifies this mental illness respectfully and makes people aware of what someone suffering from OCD experiences’” (Deamer).

I wanted to get peoples’ reaction to mental illness on TV so I showed a few people two videos clips. The first clip was made by the people from the show Monk. It was a public service announcement about OCD with Tony Shalhoub and the producer who previously suffered from symptoms of OCD. They explain how it is a terrible illness and how people can get treatment if they have OCD. One person who saw the clip said, “I think it’s really good that they’re doing this. They’re not just using OCD for entertainment, but also trying to educate people about it.” The next clip was from the TV drama Revenge. It was a scene where a man is holding people at gun point. He is implied to have some sort of psychopathic disorder and has been off medication that is supposed to suppress his symptoms. “This is obviously a more extreme version of mental illness. Something like that could probably happen, but I doubt most people who have whatever illness he has are likely to be that violent.” The first clip stirred positive reactions. All thought it was a good idea that the TV show was using its popularity to educate people about OCD by using a PSA. The second clip did not get positive reactions. Some people said that this is what they usually see on TV when someone has a mental illness, but all agreed it was not a positive portrayal.

If more media outlets educated the public about mental illness, like the PSA on OCD, rather than just focus on the news-worthy or entertainment factor, more families like mine would have a greater understanding. It may not be the top priority of the media to educate their audience, but it should be an important factor to present accurate representations of mental illness. The people who suffer from mental illness deserve to be thought of as normal rather than immediately judged as being weird or violent. The stigma causes people to see narrow-minded stereotypes instead of real people who have a disease. This should not be the case. My uncle may have grown up in a time period when mental illness was not understood by professionals, but now it is 2012. We have the treatments, but we still need acceptance and understanding of mental illness.

Works Cited

Advertisement. Mediatvzones.blogspot.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. 

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Deamer, Kacey. "Cleaning Up OCD Stereotypes." BuzzsawMag.org. Ithaca College, 15 Nov. 2009. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. . 

"Duress." Revenge. ABC. 5 Jan. 2012. Youtube.com. Web. Transcript. 19 Jan. 2012. 

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Edney, Dara Roth. "Mass Media and Mental Illness: A Literature Review." Canadian Mental Health Association (Jan. 2004): 27. Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. .

Norman Bates in Psycho . N.d. Legends of Horror. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. 

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OCD PSA with "Monk" star Tony Shalhoub. Advertisement. USA. 26 Jan. 2009. Youtube.com. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. . 

"Psychopath." Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press, Dec. 2011. Web. 19 Jan.2012..