The Glamorization of Mental Health
In an effort to reduce the stigma of mental health, popular culture has glamorized mental illnesses with severe repercussions.
Image by Jackie Reyes
In recent years, an effort has been made to reduce the stigma of mental illnesses. This effort works to portray mental illnesses as normal with a goal of reducing any discrimination amongst them. However, within this effort, the media has taken hold of mental illnesses by glamorizing and romanticizing them. In an article from the Journal of Teaching and Education, they describe how social media negatively affects individuals by glamorizing mental illness. For example, some young users on Instagram post messages that promote dangerous behaviors such as idealizing suicide and depression as well as posting pictures with extremely skinny bodies as inspiration that encourages “self-starving and self-induced vomiting.” The media has audiences around the globe, allowing for easy spreading of negative messages in regards to mental illnesses within popular culture.
Film has historically shown audiences a focus on many social issues, having a strong influence amongst people worldwide. With this power, they have been able to romanticize mental illness in recent years with unrealistic portrayals. A Texas State University thesis describes how movies have inaccurately portrayed mental illnesses, hurting the understanding and goal of reducing negative stigmas surrounding them. They describe mental illness portrayals in film to be with good intentions to shine a light on these issues, but ultimately failing to portray them entirely correctly. For example, Silence of the Lambs depicts Hannibal Lecter as a psychopath that is extremely intelligent and charming, making a wide audience falsely believe that psychopaths are always charming and intellectual when the opposite has been found to be true. This idea of mental illness being connected to intelligence is seen in many other films such as “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Big Bang Theory.” Although these portrayals have a good message and focus on creating a positive view of different mental illnesses, the trend ultimately deceives the audience to believe that mental illnesses correlate to intelligence. Other misconceptions can be seen in films such as “Heathers” and “13 Reasons Why” as it glorifies suicide, especially for the younger audiences.
The inaccurate depiction of mental illnesses in films as well as social media’s far reach in glorifying mental illnesses has extreme negative effects across the globe. An article on glorifying mental illness compares its negative effects to be just as bad as stigmatizing it. Those suffering from mental health issues may feel they are boring without having severe symptoms as they are glorified in the media, pushing these individuals to not seek help in order to keep this identity. These portrayals have the power to make individuals feel as though they are not mentally ill enough to seek help, cause misunderstandings of mental illnesses, push mentally ill individuals to stay stuck in their illness, or even push for dangerous outcomes as adolescent suicide rates went up 28.9% in the month after the first season of “13 Reasons Why.” The issue of inaccurate and harmful glorifications of mental health is extremely prevalent as it is in popular culture all around the globe with audiences ranging from very young ages into adulthood, and they have proven to be extremely influential in the minds of many.