Hollywood Needs To Change How It Depicts Mental Health

By Lauren Rearick


In recent years, television series and movies earned praise for creating storylines centered on mental health issues, nevertheless not every depiction of this supply was necessarily accurate. The results of a recent study from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention concluded that, of the best 100 grossing films of 2016 and the best television series of 2016 to 2017, nearly half of the portrayals of mental health in those works perpetuated incorrect stereotypes about mental health.


Researchers decided that only 1.7 percent of characters in movies and 7 percent of characters in television series were given a storyline pertaining to mental health, HuffPost reported. As soon as film or television did include a mental health storyline, LGBTQ+ characters and characters of color were largely disregarded. Of the films and television series studied, few characters with a storyline that centered on mental health were Black (film: 14 percent, television: 19 percent) Latinx (film: 0 percent, television: 5 percent), Asian (film: 5 percent, television: 4 percent), or multiracial (film: 1 percent, television: 4 percent). That number further decreased among members of the LGBTQ+ community; zero of the LGBTQ+ characters in the films they studied spoke having a mental health condition, and television included only eight LGBTQ+ characters with storylines related specifically to their mental health.


“What surprised me most is that while mental health conditions cut across every community, in film and TV characters from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups and the LGBT community are erased as soon as these portrayals are shown on screen,” Dr. Stacy L. Smith, an author of the study, told HuffPost.


Yet representation, even in smaller pieces, might be imagined a victory for the 46.6 million American adults living with a mental health supply, the study noticed that members of the television and film community aren’t doing their part to lessen stigma involving mental health conditions, and with talking about them. Any time characters with a mental health condition were included in storylines, they were ridiculed, called names including “weird” or “crazy,” or were shown in a humorous or mocking light. “These findings recommend that experiences of individuals with mental health conditions are largely trivialized in entertainment storylines,” the study noted.


and a lack of suitable seriousness connected with mental health, the study mentioned that television and film frequently relied on characters with uncensored mental health storylines to be portrayed as violent. This character trait was especially concerning for the study’s authors, as they noted that this reinforced a “erroneous belief that individuals with mental health conditions are largely ‘dangerous’ to society.”


The study did not imagine depictions of mental health storylines on original programming planned through streaming services like Netflix or Hulu in their findings, although they noted more studies concerning that space is needed. In closing notes, the authors wrote that experts don't nevertheless fully understand the impacts of viewing accurate portrayal of storylines that actively feature mental health, however they believe it could be rewarding, and is something that Hollywood should consider.


“By authentically depicting the nuanced and perplexing way that mental health conditions intersect individuals’ lives, media can introduce crowds to new ways of thinking, ways to ask for help, and ultimately create needed trends in our cultural beliefs about mental health,” the study noted. “In doing so, media can cease to be an engine for stigma and one source of solutions.”