Mental health in cinema

 Media is a collective term for various means of mass communication with the primary function of disseminating and receiving information. Television, radio, cinema, print, and the internet are the sources through which people come to know what is happening around them. Movies have always been a staple of entertainment. Cinema is a powerful medium of building a public belief system, and when it comes to mental illness, cinema has always played and will keep playing a crucial role in disseminating knowledge and forming beliefs and attitudes towards mental illness. Movies have always been a staple of entertainment.

“The Talkies” not only entertain us but influence our behavior and thoughts as well. We’ve identified with characters, got inspired by storylines, and discussed thought-provoking themes; movies have become more than unwinding for a couple of hours.

Despite significant changes in the understanding of mental health, “from the dark era of asylums and torture to the light of human rights and neurobiological interpretations,” much stigma surrounding mental illness remains in society. Decades of research have established that many people have inaccurate and negative beliefs about psychiatric disorders.

Portrayals of mental illness in the film are often superficial, stigmatizing, and inaccurate. Many overemphasize stereotypical negative attributes such as violence, aggression, and bizarre behavior, as well as, rely on demeaning slang terms to refer to mentally ill individuals. Presenting mental health conditions as something to be feared, shunned, laughed at, or denigrated sends a dangerous message to audiences about how mental health conditions and the individuals who experience them should be treated both within and outside of the storytelling environment”. Negative public attitudes towards psychiatric disorders can increase feelings of isolation, shame, and hopelessness in individuals suffering from these diseases. Exposure to harmful mental illness stereotypes through film may lead children to fear, distance themselves from, and act in a discriminatory manner towards individuals with mental illness.

Production and Representation of Mental Illness by Hindi Cinema

Like international cinema, Hindi cinema also has an old relationship with mental illness. However, the depiction of mental illness in Hindi cinema has undergone several changes. During the 20th century, mental illness was misrepresented in the Hindi cinema. With the advent of media convergence, that is, the amalgamation of audiovisual and print media on digital platforms, Hindi cinema gradually portrayed a much more realistic picture of mental illness, but not wholly. Cinema involves three major processes starting from bringing the concept into reality to the making of attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge around it among people.

Over the years, mental illness has supplied Hindi cinema with engaging content. The sole motive was to amuse and surprise the viewers, but that resulted in the formation of wrong concepts about mental illness. As a result, the resentment of clinicians and academicians over the superficial content on mental illness grew gradually. The discourses among the clinicians and academicians were more concerned with the sufferers and their caregivers. Cinema gave very little insight on the sufferers and their caregivers and held the taboo associated with mental illness high. A taboo or formidable concept in society eventually results in stigma.

 

Popular Movies that Got Mental Illness Wrong

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

This biopic about the Nobel Prize-winning economist John Nash, tells the story of a mathematical genius who peaks early and is sidelined by schizophrenia and institutionalized, only to make a startling recovery and come back to achieve the highest honors of his profession.  A Beautiful Mind won 4 Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture, and it may have done more than any other popular movie to combat stigma and draw attention to the positive contributions of people with serious mental health disorders.  So why is it on a list of movies that get it wrong?  The reason is Nash’s roommate Charles, who draws him into a complicated Soviet espionage plot involving his young niece and some shady secret agents.  This subplot adds excitement to what is essentially the life story of a socially isolated mathematician.  The only problem is that it all takes place in Nash’s head, as the audience discovers late in the story.  Hollywood loves twists, and mental illness is one of its favorite plot devices for spinning a story in a new direction.  But people with schizophrenia don’t normally have visual hallucinations where they see the human players in their delusions represented before them.  And they certainly don’t get driven around in cars by them, like we see the hallucinatory Charles doing in one scene (think about it).

2. Shutter Island (2010)

This movie, set shortly after World War II, involves another government conspiracy: this one about secret medical experiments conducted on patients at a high-security mental hospital for the “criminally insane.”  Director Martin Scorsese delivers lots of drama, suspense, and creepy atmospherics in this psychological thriller about a federal marshal investigating the disappearance of a female patient.  He also serves up the gamut of mental illness stereotypes, with enough twists to fill a Chubby Checker album.  I won’t try to summarize the plot, which is so complicated it poses a threat to anyone’s mental health.  I’ll just spoil the surprise ending so you don’t have to watch the movie: the federal marshal who exposes the plot is actually a patient who slipped into psychosis after failing to protect his children from their homicidal mother.  This ending manages to hit the trifecta of mental illness movie clichés: murderous mom, trauma-induced split personality, and the big reveal that ‘it was all a madman’s imaginings’ – a variation of the ‘it was only a dream trope that hasn’t been done well since Dorothy woke up in her own bed in Kansas more than 75 years ago.

 

 

1. The Visit (2015)

In this movie, mental illness is just used as a trope to scare teen audiences without a hint of accuracy. The filmmakers didn’t take into account the cognitive impairments that come with severe psychiatric illnesses. While it might be a terrifying cinematic thrill to be trapped in the middle of nowhere with escaped patients from a psychiatric hospital, the chances that they could pull off a murderous scheme is unlikely. Quite frankly, there is a lot to say about this movie that I couldn’t fit here. Read more about what The Visit got wrong about mental illness.