(rain pattering)
- Not to worry, Cindy.
It's just a bit of engine trouble.
Oh, that's okay, honey. (thunder rumbling)
I'll put the radio on.
We can listen to some music while we wait.
We interrupt this broadcast for an urgent bulletin.
A patient has absconded from a Hollywood asylum.
Oh! Oh, Brad!
Honey, get back inside the car!
They said there's a killer on the loose!
Brad?
(door rattles)
You're not Brad!
(squeals)
Did that scene seem familiar to you?
We see this story all the time in horror:
the escaped mental patient, the gruesome murders.
Yet that news report didn't actually say anything
about them being a danger.
They could've been an old lady with Alzheimer's
wandering around lost and confused.
But we have this perception of mentally ill people
as violent, and that violence is something
only mentally ill people do;
that 'mental patient' is code for 'killer.'
We saw this exact storyline
in M. Night Shyamalan's last film The Visit,
and it looks like we're going to see something similar
with his new film, Split.
Split is about a man with dissociative identity disorder,
a real condition people might equate with phrases like
split personality.
This isn't a character who is just crazy and murderous
in a nebulous way; the film takes an actual disorder
and makes the very idea of its symptoms monstrous.
These films show antagonists commit evil deeds
purely through mental illness.
'He's crazy' becomes explanation enough.
If someone is mentally ill, and they are violent,
they're violent because of their mental illness.
It's this combination
of almost exclusively negative portrayals,
combined with inaccuracy in film,
that makes our current portrayals
of mental illness on screen
so problematic.
In the real world, mental illness is extremely common,
but also very taboo.
Around one in four people may experience
mental health issues in their lives,
and one in 13 will have psychotic episodes.
They said there's a killer on the loose!
You see what this stuff does?
'Psychotic' doesn't mean you go around killing people;
psychotic episodes are just when people have periods
where they find it difficult to establish what's real or not
or difficulty in communication or expressing themselves,
such as hallucinations or delusions.
And one in 13 people will go through this in their lives;
but when the entire portrayal of mental illness
is so negative, it just serves to stigmatise people more.
Mental health in real life is pretty much
like any other kind of health; it's sort of a sliding scale.
People can have it more severely, or less severely;
people can have it throughout their entire lives,
or just for periods of their life;
and it's something that can be treated and managed.
This is not the portrayal that we see onscreen.
Often, there are two reasons behind mental health:
either it's something that you are born with,
and which is linked to being inherently evil in some way;
or it's something which is a result of childhood trauma
which has made you a bad person.
In both of these portrayals is kind of an idea
that this is inevitable, this is just who this person is,
there's no way of getting treatment for him.
We just have a lot of very negative
images and motifs in film
to do with mentally ill people.
So for example, the insane asylums,
straitjackets, things like that;
when in reality now, we have hospitals,
units, rehabs that are made to help people,
which help them manage their illnesses.
Maybe this wouldn't be such a big deal
if the knowledge about mental health that people had
meant that they would be able to tell the difference
between the fictionalised and fantastical
elements of mental health
and the stuff that has a basis in reality,
but they can't.
These portrayals serve to have real world effects
on attitudes to mental illness.
This affects both people who will never
have mental health issues, and people who will.
It encourages the idea that mental health treatment
either doesn't work, or is in itself scary and evil,
shown through the portrayals of mental health professionals
as either evil sadists, kooky hacks,
or people who are more messed up than any of us.
So let's talk about the real world effects
that media portrayals of mentally ill people can have.
This is something that has been documented and studied,
the idea that most people actually get their information
around mental illness, not from any educational
site, background, or thing that they learned at school,
but through mass media.
These portrayals can encourage dehumanisation and other-ing,
not least because a lot of the time
mentally ill characters will have
something on the outside physically
that distances themselves from 'normal' people.
This has been shown in the real world
in a very horrific way
by a nursing school which had nursing students roleplay
with people pretending to be mentally ill;
but instead of just having people come in
and pretend to be actors as they normally might do,
they had them wear masks.
As if people who are mentally ill
don't look like 'ordinary' people,
and that nurses have to be prepared for that in some way.
It can also encourage stigma around mental health.
One study, for example, found that workers were more likely
to pretend that they had gone to gaol for a petty crime
than admit that they'd had a stay in a psychiatric hospital
if asked about a gap in their work history.
It also perpetuates the idea
that people who are victims of child abuse
will inevitably become abusive and violent themselves.
Silence of the Lambs,
even the recent Fantastic Beasts film,
the conventional trope that early trauma
and horrific childhood abuse
creates a monstrous adult.
But, as mentioned earlier,
one of the most insidious things that comes from these films
is the link between violence and mental health;
when in fact, studies have shown that
people who suffer from mental illness
are more likely to be the victim of violence
than they are to perpetrate it.
In reality, according to the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,
no more than three percent of violent crimes
are committed by mentally ill people.
And yet, 60% of people think that people with schizophrenia
are likely to commit violent crimes.
While there is evidence
of a slight increased risk in violence
from patients who have schizophrenia
compared to the general population,
all those studies agree
that the majority of people who are schizophrenic
will never be violent.
Now I'm not saying that these films are responsible
for all of our negative ideas about mental health.
I think that's a societal web problem
with a lot of different elements to it;
but I think that when we don't have any provisions
for actual education around mental health
in schools and universities, or elsewhere,
it's no wonder that people are turning to mass media
for their ideas around mental health.
I think, like so many of the issues
and negative representation that I talk about,
it's about some form of balance.
It's not to say that every mentally ill person,
every gay person, every black person, every woman,
has to be some kind of saintly character;
but when we don't have a real variety and mix
and show of reality in the portrayals of these people,
that's when it becomes a problem.
As always, if you'd like to help
support me make these films,
I'll leave a link to my Patreon below,
along with all my social media links.
You can find me all over the internet.
In the comments, let's talk about
our favourite horror movies.
Do they have any link to mental health,
and have you ever thought about this before?
Until I see you next time, bye.