Hollywood overcoming stigma about mental illness
LOS ANGELES The 1941 film The Wolf Man presents Larry Talbot’s transformation from man to wolf as a form of schizophrenia. So little was known about mental illnesses then, the explanation may have seemed plausible.
Hollywood has come a long way since portraying someone with mental illness as a monster, instead bringing characters to the big screen whose mental struggles look more like the ones experienced by many people in everyday life.
The industry ’s more realistic approach to such conditions is on abundant display this summer. At least half a dozen recent releases reflect nuanced characters, both real and fictional, facing mental illness.
Among the conditions onscreen this season are borderline personality disorder ( Welcome to Me), bipolar disorder ( Infinitely Polar Bear, What Happened, Miss Simone?), schizoaffective disorder ( Love & Mercy), addiction and eating disorders ( Amy), and major depression ( I Smile Back, The End of the Tour).
Movies have a formative effect on popular concepts of mental illness in our culture, said psychiatry professor Danny Wedding, co- author of Movies & Mental Illness: Using Films to Understand Psychopathology, making accuracy and empathy especially important.
“Films will reach millions of people who will never read a psychology textbook or who will never be in therapy,” he said. “And often times people who don’t read books do go to movies, so I think films have tremendous potential for shaping public attitudes to mental illness.”
Realistic presentations of people with mood or behaviour issues can help promote understanding and ease stigma for real sufferers, who are plentiful. One in four adults experiences mental illness in any given year and one in 17 lives with a serious condition such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
While personal interaction is the most effective way to eradicate stereotypes about people with mental illnesses, NAMI spokesman Bob Carolla said “movies can be surrogates for personal contact.” The organization consults with filmmakers about accuracy and promotes productions that get it right.
Sympathetic portrayals can also be reassuring for sufferers and their families, providing an explanation for some behaviours, said I Smile Back author and screenwriter Amy Koppelman.
“These mood disorders are real, as real as diabetes,” she said, “and there’s this validation we can have” in seeing them depicted authentically onscreen.
Actor Jason Segel embraced that notion in The End of the Tour, in which he portrays author David Foster Wallace, who took his life at age 46 after decades battling depression.
“The primary thing that’s really important, depression, addiction, any of these subjects that we cover ... the most important thing is that it’s real,” Segel said.
Fair depictions of mood disorders help normalize these common maladies, said Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at University of California, Berkeley.
Experiences of mental illness aren’t necessarily tragic, and Hollywood loves a story of triumph. Consider Geoffrey Rush as pianist David Helfgott overcoming schizophrenia in Shine, or Russell Crowe doing the same as John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Bradley Cooper’s bipolar character ultimately finds love in Silver Linings Playbook, and Brian Wilson finds himself in Love & Mercy.
“A lot of people with mental illness often have stories of perseverance and courage,” Carolla said. “They are dramatic stories, and real stories. And they often are not just about the John Nashes, but also relatively ordinary people.”
The spate of recent releases is a good sign, he said: “It’s a reflection of the fact that there’s a growing awareness in the country around mental health conditions of one kind or another, and there’s a greater openness among people to discuss them.”
That allows for more stories to emerge, said Koppelman, who believes the trend of movies about mental illness reflects their creators’ efforts to make sense of their personal experiences with these conditions. I Smile Back is autobiographical, as is Infinitely Polar Bear.
“Most people I know who are interested in this subject have been touched by it in one way or another, and this is a way of mining the truth so they can understand what happened,” she said.