Schizophrenia In Media Analysis

Mental illness is heavily stigmatized in mainstream media sources, such as articles, books and movies. The character who is suffering from a mental disorder, which is stigmatized is often exaggerated for the sake of entertainment. The stigmatization of mental disorders is unfair to those who have mental disorders. The viewers of media are viewing those suffering from the disorders as “psychotic” or “crazy”, which is inaccurate and unjust to those affected. The media representation of the disorder provides vague and inaccurate causes and treatments. In the movie series “The Dark Knight Rises” and television series “Dexter”, the characters Joker and Dexter are afflicted with the mental disorder antisocial personality disorder; in which it creates

As evidenced by the poignancy of the Bechdel Test and the DuVernay Test, white men and their stories dominate film. The problem, of course, that arises from such a whitewashed male perspective is that the valid and worthwhile stories of other groups of people are pushed aside, often as a means of plot progression for white male protagonists. Add mental illness to the mix. On top of the silenced forced upon marginalized groups simply for not being the most privileged, the people in these groups, when afflicted by mental illness, fall victim to harsh stereotypes that further eliminate the uniqueness of their stories. Of these groups, women are of particular interest because they are not left out of cinema completely, just enough to be exemplars of a group whose voice muted by stereotypes such as that of the crazy girlfriend, the fragile wallflower, and, most importantly for the purposes of this paper, the beautiful tragedy. It is a common plotline in the mental ill woman-concerned media to start with a female character noted for her beauty, and often her innocence but not always, who nose dives into mental illness. Most importantly and, more often than not, most differently from mentally ill characters that are white and male, the craze becomes so overwhelming that the female character has to be forcibly silenced in the end, either by death or by being locked away. The same is true for other characters of alternate minority groups, such as Anthony in Dead Presidents, but

exaggerating symptoms and stereotyping individuals with a mental disorder. For example, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho, in which man with schizophrenia murders guests in a hotel, influences viewers to believe that all individuals suffering from schizophrenia are dangerous. However, that is rarely the case (Polatis, 2014). Therefore, it is refreshing to find a movie that accurately portrays the true personality of and individual living with a mental illness. The movie Silver Linings Playbook chronicles the experiences of Pat Solitano, a man suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder who was recently released from a psychiatric facility. Although this paper focuses on Pat’s experiences, it is important to note that the film not only takes on the task of portraying bipolar disorder, but also mental illness in general with other major characters suffering from a mixture of psychological or personality disorders. The film opens with Pat at Karel Psychiatric Facility in Baltimore, Maryland. We later learn that Pat was institutionalized for nearly beating to death the man with whom he caught his wife Nikki cheating on him. The rest of the film details

In many movies the producers have an individual playing a violent character who’s supposed to have schizophrenia. These people are stereotyped as being unpredictable and dangerous. Suicide is very high among people with schizophrenia but the risk of violence is very small according to U. S. National Institute of Mental Health. The entertainment world have society believing that people with schizophrenia harm themselves. More research is needed to show how movies give the public the wrong perception of the illness.

Black Swan is a film that discusses the symptoms and effects of schizophrenia on people and the mental aspects of it. Schizophrenia is often seen as an illness instead of a disorder in society and not taken as a serious thing and is often just swept under the rug. This film helps to understand the actual cause and the effect it can have on everyday life and how it can often be ignored. This paper will discuss concepts from the AP Psychology standards of developmental psychology, personality, abnormal behavior, social psychology, and motivation and emotion shown in the movie Black Swan.

While “movies, newspapers, magazines, television shows, books, radio programs, and advertisements have all been vehicles for communicating the experience of…mental illness” it usually “[tends] to be a misrepresentation of the experience” (Corrigan 201). This has a major negative impact on people suffering from mental illnesses because they feel sentiments of “societal scorn and discrimination” which ultimately “leads to diminished self-esteem, fear of pursuing one’s goals, and loss of social opportunities” (Corrigan 201). There seems to be a revival in the world of movies and television of depicting forms of exploring the minds of serial killers which started in the 60s with the creation of the Horror film genre. There is almost a strange fascination amongst audiences to know more about the minds of murderers and those who are too sick to see the wrong they are doing. Films depicting mental health have a great impact on the lives of those suffering from mental illness and also the perceptions of those who do not suffer from mental illness. The mostly negative stigma surrounding those who suffer from mental disorders gives them a bad reputation that impacts most aspects of their lives.

Many films today go beyond simple dramas and acts of heroism. A recent interest in the individual and why each person does, acts, lives the way they do makes for wonderful film adaptations of the tortured human soul. Cult films like Donnie Darko received a very strong following due to its strong portrayal of a young man dealing with psychological issues, the question of God, feeling alone, and death. More than any teenager should have to deal with but considering our day and age, it is not surprising that the following Donnie Darko has earned through beautiful portrayal of a tormented soul is made up of mainly adolescents. In the film, Donnie is said to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia.

After watching the documentary on Schizophrenia, I believe if I had the illness it would be like living in two different worlds. You can go from having delusions and hallucinations that would take over someone’s body, then once you take the medications, the symptoms lessen and you can have a normal controllable life. Living with someone who has schizophrenia would require a lot of support and love for the patient. It would be important to maintain a sense of humor, educate yourself about the illness and to remain hopeful when times get rough. I believe Schizophrenia is one of the worst mental illnesses, due to being unable to control how one acts or thinks. In the documentary, University of Chicago offered Nash a prestigious position and Nash

Focusing on how neurotic females are presented, this paper will take examples from three films that portray mental instability, starting from the earliest period they are set in to the most recent. Starting with Rosemary’s baby (Polanski, 1968) is a Psychological horror Film set in 1966. Based around the submissive female character Rosemary Woodhouse, the film follows her path through mental destruction after struggling to conform to finding out her baby is possessed by Satan. Girl Interrupted (Mangold, 1999) is an American psychological thriller film set in the changing world of the late 1960’s. Starring Susanna Kaysen, she questions and struggles with coming to terms with her mental state and the conformity of her insanity. Lastly Suicide

With basic information on what this mental illness is, to understand Schizophrenia further, research into personal encounters became apparent. After looking into the mind of Ian Chovil who was a victim of the mental health disease and finding his accounts very eccentric it is clear that this is something that could quite possibly affect the brains of the people that commit serious crimes in regards to the Media. Ian says in his story a few things which connect this type of mental health to violent obscure behaviour. He says he had delusions right from the start which after reading his story states, progressed from visions of famous persons trying to force him to commit suicide right to the later stages of his schizophrenia where he says he got a lot of messages from favourite Rock and Rolla songs, movies, cartoons and library books. Ian doesn’t say these forms of media forced him to murder innocent people but it does provide evidence that he received messages. These messages in the mind of another schizophrenic could lead to serious acts of violence which leads onto the next part of his story where he mentions how his delusions changed as aliens instructed him on the real nature of reality then three things happened as contact with reality became very tenuous, he got into trouble with the law, became an alcoholic and lost his job. He is now taking instructions from a part of his mind he perceives

I believe the overall portrayal of mental health in the media is negative. Media depicts Mental Illness as a negative and something to be feared. They tend to focus on violent aspects of mental health rather than the causes of mental health issues or how to help solve these issues. More often than not, you hear of violent stories in the media such as crimes committed by those suffering, suicide, etc. I have found that media typically glazes over the how common mental illness is, and how many people deal with it on a daily basis in ‘non-violent’ ways.

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that plagues about 1 out of every 100 Americans. Despite this fact, most of the general public remains ignorant to the basic pathology of the disease and the mechanisms of identifying and treating it. It is considered by some to be a “scary” mental illness and is often ignored, when compared to the other equally serious and caustic ones like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (also referred to as GAD), ADHD, and Chronic Depression. This is illustrated by the mainstream media which is quick to romanticize the main character. They are written to have overt symptoms of the aforementioned diseases above and they do so without providing an ounce of fact to soften the blow or mitigate the damage that their works, being a topic of mass interest is presenting half-truths and paper tigers to an often young, uninformed, and highly impressionable global audience. This and much more causes the stigmatization of mental illness in general, especially those deemed “scary” and unpleasant” by the masses.

The media has a very bad tendency to show schizophrenia as something violent and evil, lying to the public making it look much worse, this is shown by, “It is certainly alarming that many media representations of schizophrenia are sensationalized, suggesting the risk is far greater than in reality” (Ms.Hocking, Schizophrenia vs. The Media). Furthermore, the reason behind these deluded thoughts is due to the media’s influence on people. People rely so much on the media in this time period that anything in the media is instantly seen as true even if there is a false reality around it. After all it is these harsh lies that hurt ones with schizophrenia, making them all look like evil, violent, villains and make others treat them as so due to the corruption placed in the minds of the people through media. A good example of this falsification is horror movie villains, they are sometimes seen with signs of schizophrenia but are completely portrayed as evil due to this illness. The only thing that comes to mind to fix this problem is to do research on the illness so those with it do not get misjudged and mistreated, they need to learn how to help the problem not make it

Severe mental illnesses and personality disorders, such as schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, have played the most prevalent roles in horror films. The plot often proceeds as follows; an escaped mental patient arrives at a nearby cabin where local teenagers go to escape the confines of daily life. In one way or another, each teen get picked off one by one; murdered in cold blood. These films depict victims of mental disorder in ways that create a misunderstanding of their illness and, as a result, precipitates a negative stereotype deriving from fear and hysteria.

All popular media programs share an unrealistic depiction of making the viewers believe that people with schizophrenia are murderers, rapists, pedophiles,or people with multiple personalities. The television shows inaccurately portray mental disorders, especially schizophrenia. Many people are scared of the behaviors people with this disorder experiences. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder or group of disorders marked by disturbances in thinking, emotional responsiveness, and behavior(Ford-Martin). The term schizophrenia comes from two greek words that mean “split mind.” Eugen Bleuler, used this to describe the splitting apart of mental functions that he regarded as the central characteristics of schizophrenia(Ford-Martin). Schizophrenia