Mental illness is a hot topic in political debate — which might be a good thing, given that our mental healthcare system is critically flawed and in dire need of legislative correction. However, most of the politicians, pundits and general public discussing it have no idea what they’re talking about.
This can be partly attributed to how misleading popular media portrayals of the mentally ill are. Mental illness is used as a cheap character quirk, a comic moment or a catalyst for violence. The mentally ill are stupid children, out-of-control sideshow acts or criminals. They never get better, probably because their psychiatrists are incompetent and corrupt. And as with any marginalized group, gross caricatures don’t help anyone.
For the mentally ill, these depictions can be hurtful. They may feel their problems are less “real” because they don’t look like what is shown onscreen. Or, more simply, it may feel like everyone thinks they are violent, stupid or “crazy.” Which can lead to the thought: "Is everyone right about me?" It adds an extra level of shame to a diagnosis that carries enough stigma with it already, leading many people who need treatment not to seek it.
For those unfamiliar with the issue, these portrayals widen the gap between how they see the mentally ill and the truth about mental illness.
To start: Mental illness is not rare. About 4 percent of adults in the U.S. have a serious mental illness — the ones you usually see hideously misrepresented in movies — like schizophrenia, OCD or clinical depression. When you widen the net to include any mental illness, which includes cases of minor anxiety and low-level depressive disorders, the number jumps to 18.1 percent. That’s almost 44 million people in the U.S. And none of those statistics include the 23.5 million people in the U.S. suffering from substance abuse disorders.
It’s also largely not funny. Of course, some humor writers and stand-up comics can construct comedy around mental illness, but by definition, most disorders cause distress that is "clinically significant." For many, mental illness is a uniquely painful experience. Things that may be quirky or funny on TV can cause real people embarrassment or discomfort.
And lastly, the vast majority of people who are mentally ill are not and never will be violent. "Psycho," "Halloween" and "American Psycho" all feature mentally ill killers — dissociative identity disorder, psychosis and antisocial personality disorder, respectively. This image is ingrained into horror movies and asylum thrillers, but it’s far from the truth. Not only are all of these disorders vastly different from what is shown on screen, but people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it.
Largely, all of these depictions assume that there is only one way to experience mental illness — the dramatic, movie-worthy way — where there is actually a wide range of experience. Some people have milder cases of a disorder, cope better, have better support systems or have responded better to treatment. Some disorders are easier to live with than others.
It should go without saying that what you see in the movies shouldn’t follow you into politics. Nevertheless, people carry these impressions with them into conversations about mental health as if they were facts.
And if you turn to the news media, the arbiter of what is and is not discussed politically, for a more fair and balanced view, the situation isn’t much better. Invariably, mental illness becomes important to the media only when something bad happens — usually when there's a mass shooting, or, more rarely, when someone is a victim of suicide.
I addressed in a past column that mental illness has limited relevance when discussing gun control. The idea that simply closing loopholes to keep the mentally ill from getting guns will prevent killings showcases an oversimplified view of both mental illness and gun violence. It stems from that same thought that mental illness is rare and always identical for every sufferer — information which is patently wrong, but peddled by editorial journalists every time someone blames mental health for violence.
It also implies that the mentally ill are inherently violent, which is unfair, untrue and unnecessarily stigmatizing. The facts in favor of blaming violence on the mentally ill simply do not hold up to scrutiny. In the March 17 paper, Grace Batton, representing the loophole argument, quoted the figure that three out of more than 20 — 28, in fact —mass shootings in the last seven years had mental illness as an underlying cause. That’s 11 percent of mass shootings in the last seven years. Not an insignificant number of lives lost, but not exactly a massive percentage of killers who fit the media’s profile of a mass shooter.
And because we focus on mental health issues only when something violent happens, more pressing issues are routinely ignored.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, arguably the most concerned about the poor and middle class remaining in the race, cracked a joke in a recent debate about how the Republican debates proved we needed to invest in mental health care, drawing widespread criticism. Sanders might be better served by discussing the fact that those living below the poverty line have about twice the incidence of common mental disorders than his much-hated 1 percent does.
We should be talking about lack of access to and cost of treatment. High unemployment rates among the mentally ill, even when they are willing and able to work. The fact that disabled workers are paid only 64 cents to every dollar their able coworkers are. The higher incidence of violence against the mentally ill. The disproportionate percentage of the prison population that is mentally ill and the discrimination that they face in the criminal justice system. I could go on.
All of these things are serious issues dealing with mental health that are not covered by reporters and not talked about by politicians. These people, like much of the population, are either ignorant to or ignoring the fact that these issues exist. Either way, the lack of accurate information in these debates is unacceptable. More than that, it's harmful to people who are already facing stigma and discrimination.
I encourage anyone who wants to debate mental illness to do the smallest amount of research on what the real issues are before they continue the cycle of misinformation.