#293 What If Popular Media Is Teaching Us Fear?

We dig into how movies and TV shape what people believe about mental illness, from fear-based villain stories to glossy “tortured genius” myths. We also highlight what healthier representation looks like when shows normalize therapy, medication, recovery, and real human complexity. 

• Villainization tropes that use diagnosis as a motive for evil 
• Split as an example of DID being linked to danger 
• Cultivation theory and how repeated images reshape “reality” 
• Stats on violence portrayals and why they stick in the audience mind 
• Lack of racial diversity in mental illness representation on screen 
• Eomanticization of mental illness through the “tortured genius” lens 
• A Beautiful Mind and the harmful willpower-over-medication message 
• Community stigma around psychiatric medication and seeking help 
• Strong portrayals of depression, addiction, PTSD, grief and therapy 
• Adolescence as a complicated and nuanced middle ground 
• What good representation needs: recovery, diversity, normalized care 

Tune in weekly to Wellbeing Wednesday with Gurjeet Gill on The Universal Radio Network, 97.9 FM in Edmonton, or globally at www.theuniversalradio.com

IG: @theuniversalradio

Transcript

Welcome And Topic Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Universal Radio Networks podcast. My name is Gurji, and in today's episode, we are discussing mental illness portrayals in popular media. We're focusing on only Western media today, but if you have suggestions for Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Nollywood, Hollywood, Bollywood films, or TV shows that you think have kind of interesting depictions of mental illness and even mental health, let me know and I'll cover it in a future episode. But today we're discussing everything from the villainization trope of mental illness, the romanticization trope, the images and ideals that media pushes on us, given the very popular depictions of mental illness in media, and so much more. But honestly, we've had some pretty gorgeous days out. And if there's anything that spring reminds me of, is you really gotta get outside and enjoy those beautiful days while we have them. Because it could snow out of nowhere, or it could just, you know, start pouring rain. It is the spring, so it is to be expected, but we do have those really sunny days where it's like low 20s, it's sunny, it's bright, you leave work, you leave class, and you just feel oh, you just feel like re-energized. It's such a great feeling. So this is Wellbeing Wednesday, and my name is Grigit. I'm the person who's lucky enough to be your host today, and I'm covering a topic that honestly is just coming up because I have been watching a lot of TV lately. It's coming from the fact that, you know, I don't have as much time for my other hobbies that are screen-related hobbies like gaming or you know, creating Pinterest mood boards and stuff like that. Those are stuff I those are things that I like doing, but they take up a lot of time. So it's pretty easy to just like knock out like a quick episode or part of an episode and be able to pause it whenever because everything's on demand in stream nowadays. So I've been watching a lot of TV, and one thing I've been noticing is that there's these themes of like mental health and mental illness that I can kind of get behind in some cases, and in other cases, I just can't. It doesn't make sense to me, like what is going on here, why is this being vilified for no reason? So I want to really talk about that. I know we're a South Asian radio station, but I'm focusing mainly on Western forms of media like TV, movies, books, whatever have you, and talking about some popular shows right now. So we'll talk about euphoria and their uh portrayal of addiction and things like that. Although maybe not season three, because season three is a little bit of a wack-a-doodle season where it's kind of all over the place. But season two with Rue and her addiction was just like a showcase in how addiction affects families and how addiction can just change a person like entirely. Like Rue goes from I don't want to, I actually, you know, I'm I'm I'm not gonna get into it right now. I'm not gonna get into it right now. We have time to talk about that later.

Journaling Prompt On Favourite Failure

SPEAKER_00 3:39

But we start off every Wellbeing Wednesday talking about a journaling prompt of some kind, and this prompt is one that actually rings really true for myself. I recently had a rejection from something I applied for that was really important to me, and it really sucked. I realized I hadn't experienced failure like that or rejection like that since maybe 2021. And my first big failure prior to my failure in 2021 was in 2018, 2019. It was a long time ago. So I want to know what is your favorite failure that you've had in your life. It could be a failed relationship, it could be a really expensive mistake you made, it could be applying for something, a job, a scholarship that you didn't get that redirected you somewhere else. Because ultimately, I believe that we're exactly where we need to be in our lives when we need to be. And you could be going through the most awful, horrendous life experiences you've probably had in your whole life, and you will come out of it stronger and having learned more. So I really just want to reflect on what is your favorite failure? What failure taught you the most? What failure led you to the beautiful opportunity that you have now. Now, I apologize, I did make you guys think about some of your failures because it can be scary to dive back into things in life that maybe didn't serve us the way we wanted them to. I can think of a handful of failures in my life where you know, whether it's being fired from a job or getting kicked out of a program or having to withdraw from a class or having a really scary meeting with a boss where they confront a mistake you might have made. Now, these are all really terrifying, but you know, failures and rejections are always going to be coming up in our life. And the only thing that stays consistent, really, and even then not the most consistent, but the only thing we can really rely on is our ability to deal with those problems as they come up. So I really hope that reflecting on that can give you a sense of embracing failure and you know, being aggressive in life and just going for it.

Video Games And Learning Through Risk

SPEAKER_00 6:10

I okay, this is gonna be a little bit of a tangent compared to like what we're talking about today with like mental health and mental illness portrayals and media, but there is this life lesson that I have learned from video games of all places that really has stuck with me. And it's really only stuck with me within the last like maybe two years, which is not a very long time, but it's enough for me to tell my friends about this, for me to think about this regularly. And that is in a video game, there's something about positioning and having better aim, and the only way that you can really get better aim or learn what positioning is good and bad in a game, is to be aggressive in your play, make the move, challenge someone, and get punished for it. You can either be killed in the video game, you'll have to restart, but at least you learned. Versus if you were passive and you never, you know, challenge that player that you heard to your left, if you never went down the scary tunnel in a video game and chose the scarier option, you're limiting yourself by making these choices without even knowing what's out there. And as long as you're safe to do so, you should go for the scary option. Go for the aggressive option, try for that thing. And the reason why I'm encouraging you to do that is because without being aggressive and making that play, you can't learn. There's a saying in English about how ships that stay in port have the calmest waters, but they also have the least amount of stories, something, something along those lines. Essentially saying that, you know, ships that stay in the port where the water is calm and protected and sheltered, they gain really no value unless they leave that port and they go off and they travel, they sail, they go on an expedition, they go on an adventure, they go on a trade route. This is something that I want us to embrace as well. Like, there's no reason why you can't do something, you should just go for it. If you're not hurting yourself and if you're not hurting others, you should go for it. And this is another thing I think about. There's people in who are less deserving of the things that I want who have those things. For example, if you really want to apply for this promotion, but you keep seeing co-workers who are less deserving, who work less hard, get that promotion, go for it. Absolutely go for it. Why not? What are you gonna lose? You'll gain interview experience, you'll have another relook at your resume, you'll have a chance to look at your achievements at work and compile them. Is there something you're applying for at school? Do you want to be the president of your club, but you're scared, so you're applying to be vice president instead? Screw that. Go for the presidency, be the president of the student club that you want to be. Because what's what's gonna what's gonna be the harm? If you've thrown your hat in the ring, the next time you try and apply for presidency, people aren't gonna remember your name. All of this compiles and we succeed the more we try. So learn from your mistakes.

Split And The Villain Trope

SPEAKER_00 9:10

So diving right into the topic of today's Wellbeing Wednesday with Kuji is we're talking about mental illness portrayals in popular media. And I'm focusing mostly on Western media, but that doesn't mean I can't give a brown king his flowers, and that is M9 Shyamalan. So he has this history of amazing films like Sign, like Split, and the movie we're specifically talking about today is Split. So this came out in 2016, and it really exemplifies a common problem we see in media around mental illness, and that is vilifying mental illness, like having someone's inner motive for doing evil be the fact that they have a mental illness. This is a very long, very tired trope in Hollywood of making the evil guy mentally ill because that means that you don't have to give a motive. It's just because they're crazy, it's just because they're scary and evil and they have a mental illness. Like, regardless of whether the intention is to say that people with mental illness are dangerous or scary, regardless if that's the intention or not, it is what the story is telling us. So in split, the movie focuses on a man with dissociative identity disorder or DID. So this person goes around and kidnaps, terrorizes people. And even if you're saying that you know, mental illness does not make someone inherently evil by making movies like this where the person who is evil, their primary like character trait is their mental illness. You're you're creating a link in people's mind. And it's important to remember that just because you're diagnosed with a mental illness does not make you a danger to society, and it also doesn't remove you from having good mental health days. Just like if you've never been diagnosed with a mental illness, that doesn't mean that you don't have mental health that needs to be taken care of. Can you imagine if I told you that just because you've never had a heart attack before or you don't have a chronic illness, that there's no reason for you to take care of your physical health? That would be insanity. Now imagine if I decided to make movies and TV shows about how people who have had a broken leg are evil and you know go around and break other people's legs because they're jealous. That's nuts. That is absolutely nuts. It just doesn't make sense. And really, there's no reason to be vilifying mental illness in this same way because it's it's old, it's tired. It doesn't change the fact that the movie is decent, but it is an idea that we do need to kind of erase from our mind because that's not what DID looks like. Most people who have DID are overwhelmingly more likely to be a victim of trauma, to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator. But how many of us knew that before we watched a film like that? How many of us knew that before we listened to today's Well Being Wednesday episode? And it's not just split. Like, I don't want to single out a brown man in Hollywood. I want to point out that it's not just this, it's many other forms. Like we look at horror movies, the horror genre as a whole. Like they look at psychopathy and narcissism and these like pop culture, like psych terms. And really, it's just it hasn't gone away totally, but it is decreasing. And this initiative from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that in 2022, about 72% of film characters with a mental health condition were shown as the perpetrators of violence. 72%. So, what message is that carrying across to people in the audience who may not be educated about mental health or mental illness or understand it totally? Whether we like it or not, what we see on screens is what shapes our reality of life. For example, if you see sitcoms where the husband is super lazy and the wife is very anxious, you start to believe that this is a common and okay stereotype and relationship dynamic for relationships. Like we see that in the Simpsons, Family Guy, like you name it. Any sitcom, there is the lazy dad, doesn't parent much, and then the anxious mom who's overbearing or like overly involved or high strung. This shapes what we see as normal in our world.

Cultivation Theory And Harmful Stereotypes

SPEAKER_00 13:45

And so there is a theory in media studies called cultivation theory that basically says the more TV you watch, the more your understanding of reality starts to match what's on TV. And even if what's on TV is wildly inaccurate. So if it's something out there that you wouldn't believe or see as normal in real life, if you see that often enough, like our brains are still very like low evolved, our world is moving really fast, but our brains, our bodies, and our systems are still kind of stuck in like ye old days of evolution. So when we see something on TV, we see real people, real actions, real scenarios, but then they add in a gag or they add in a sense of humor that makes fun of a group of people, then you start to believe that that's okay. That gag is normal, that bit is fine, that comment about a group of people is an okay comment to make. So studies found that heavy television viewers overestimate how common and how dangerous mental illness is in real life because they're exposed to all these ideas of people who have mental illness as being a danger to others. They literally believe that more people with mental illness commit crimes than actually do because that's what they see on screens. And it's not like an abstract statistic or a prediction, like that's your neighbor crossing the street when they see an individual like shaking their head and experiencing like withdrawals or experiencing a drug overdose. That's someone making a joke of like, oh, you made that up, like you heard me say that. Are you schizophrenic or something? It's that joke at someone else's expense. It's a family deciding to not talk about their child's depression because you don't really see it talked about on TV and you don't really have an idea what to say. The image in everybody's head is often planted by media that mental illness is unpredictable, which is dangerous, which is shameful, and that by addressing and confronting mental illness, you make it real. That's like a whole other thing. So there's something that's super relevant about this for us, and that's that researchers researchers have found that mental illness in popular films is almost exclusively shown through white and often male characters, and only around 4% of characters with mental health conditions in these like top-grossing films, like Hollywood films, are actually Asian. So not only is a representation of who can have mental illness inaccurate, but it makes it so that we're vilifying and associating mental illness with evil through the actions shown by these characters on screen. And when we see people who are representing mental illness, whether in a positive or negative light, and they're primarily a part of one gender group or one ethnicity group, it makes it so we see that other groups can't necessarily have those things. Question mark. Now, it does kind of sound ridiculous, but I promise there is this whole shaping of our world through media. Watch out for it and you'll start noticing it everywhere.

A Beautiful Mind And Romanticizing Illness

SPEAKER_00 17:04

When we think of mental illness in media, one film comes up almost repeatedly, and it's A Beautiful Mind. Now, this is kind of an older film, and so maybe if you're in your young 20s, you might not have seen this, but it's a Russell Crowe film, and it's about Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, who has schizophrenia. And this movie is a great example of the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to tropes of mental illness in media, where on one hand we have the villain trope of this person has mental illness, therefore they're capable of harming others, therefore, mental illness equals scary. The opposite is the romanticization of the tortured genius, or like the beautiful, melancholic, manic pixie girl who stares out of like rainy windows and writes quirky poetry and dresses really brightly, or like the brilliant but depressed detective who drinks too much and struggles with alcohol, but he solves every case, so it makes his addiction problems okay. So it makes mental illness aesthetic and like desirable and like something that makes someone interesting and it gives them depth and it's a part of their character. And it can make people more interesting in the sense that there's more to understand about someone than just a surface level, because mental illnesses can be invisible. You can't always look at someone visibly and say, ah, they have borderline personality disorder, or like, oh, this person has struggled with addiction issues, therefore they have this rich background. It's like, no, you gotta learn about a person. But going back to a beautiful mind, there are genuinely good things about the movie, but here's a part that kind of bugs me is at the end of the movie, Nash stops taking his medication basically, and decides to just mentally reject his hallucinations hallucinations through willpower and then wins a Nobel Peace Prize. Or not a Peace Prize, sorry, Nobel Prize. I think it was math, I don't remember. Um, but that was kind of odd for me because that's not how schizophrenia works. You can't just mind muscle your way through hallucination hallucinations when you had a diagnosable mental illness. Like stopping medications without medical guidance, that can be seriously traumatic to your body, it can cause rapid relapse, it can cause harm. And the film kind of treats it as like a brave choice of like, oh, good for him. He's getting rid of his medication, he's stronger than his illness. Like, imagine if we treated physical illnesses like that. Like, you're so great for getting through your wisdom tooth surgery without you know numbing the area. You're so strong. What a beautiful decision that you've made for yourself. I love that you didn't wear a cast when you broke your wrist. That's so brave of you. You're so much stronger than your broken wrist. Like, it's so strange. It's so strange if we treated physical illnesses the same way we treat mental illnesses. But that's like a major issue I have with that movie. But every time I talk about mental health and media, that one always comes up. And there's another TV show that I love. It's Bojack Horseman. Okay. I will do like a whole other topic on it, like a whole show. I swear to gosh, because I love that show. It displays depression so well. It shows you an antagonist who is also your protagonist who is trying to do better, but just can't. And he does do better sometimes, but then he's not perfect. It's such a good, oh it's such a good show. I love it. I will talk so much more about it.

Medication Myths And Community Stigma

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Another thing that really bugs me about a beautiful mind and him not taking his medications is it reminds me a lot of kind of like South Asian community attitudes towards mental illness and like psychiatric medication, where if you prayed more or you went to the mosque more, or if you were just stronger, if you tried harder, or you know, things like that, like you could overcome your mental health issues and your mental illness. And don't get me wrong, trying hard and turning to religion and turning to community can all be protective factors and they can improve your mental health. But it's really important to know when what you're dealing with goes beyond your personal resources and what you have immediately available to you. Sometimes we do need professional help, and that's actually something that I'll be talking about next week. I'll have a psychologist on air with me or a counselor, someone who can talk to us about what is it like to acknowledge, like when we need professional help. What is it gonna be like? Like, how do I find The right professional help for me. So we'll be talking about that next Wednesday. So make sure you don't miss it because it can be really hard to identify when we need professional mental health help. But it is really, really important to not reject the advice of medical health professionals who tell us the medical doses we need or what kind of steps that we can take to improve our mental health. Sometimes we can't just pray away or be stronger than our weaknesses. Sometimes we need help, and that is a-okay because knowing when to need help and asking for it is a strength of its own. So when we have these like really cool films talking about yes, if you were just stronger and better than your mental illness, you can stop taking medications. You'll be fine. It is really rough. And it's also really common in mental illness to take your medication and then feel better and feel better for so long that you think maybe I'm cured. Maybe I don't have to take my medication anymore. And then you stop cold turkey, and your life goes back to what it was prior to medication. Except now you got to do the work again to get your body used to a certain dosage or build up the dosage and you know, book appointments with the psychiatrist, and then have to go to the pharmacy to fill your medication. It's harder to get back into it because it's not an easy process. Medication is expensive. Getting an appointment with the psychiatrist is hard work. It literally is hard work. I have friends in the past who have waited over a year to get in with the same psychiatrist that they've been seeing before. So when you're taking medication and life feels great and dandy, it can feel really easy to forget what it was like and then to not take it. I personally have never had experience with medication and mental health and mental illness, but it does remind me a lot of when I was taking pain relievers, like T3s, for when I got my wisdom teeth taken out. They would tell me every certain number of hours you should take pain meds. But I was really cautious about not becoming dependent or addicted to them because addiction runs in my family. And I know addiction runs in my family because when I had to go under anesthesia for my endoscopy once, I loved it and I thought it was the most amazing thing on earth. And I was so excited, I almost asked my doctor, when is the next time I can go under anesthesia for an endoscopy? And that's how I knew addiction definitely did run in my family. But anyway, the doctors were saying you have to, or the dentist was saying you have to take your pain meds every couple of hours. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna tough it out. I'm gonna do another extra hour and see how I feel because I feel no pain right now, so I'll likely be fine. And before you know it, I was in the most mind-numbing, excruciating pain for an extra hour of my life than I really needed to be because I didn't listen to medical advice. So even though I'm here preaching to you all about how you should take your medication as prescribed by professionals, you know, we're human, we make mistakes, but importantly, we learn from them.

When TV Gets Mental Health Right

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Now, it's not all terrible portrayals of mental illness in media, okay? Because there are times where it's done well. Like I mentioned, Bojack Horse fans, they do it well. Euphoria's showing of rue and addiction, uh, you know, lying to herself, lying to her family, having the most disgusting, enraging, hard-to-watch fights with her mom and her sister present. Like, that is very real. That is happening in households all across, like, not a lot, okay. Realistically, it's happening in some households where there is an addicted family member who is fighting it out in some of the most horrific family fights you've ever seen because of their addiction. It happens. Also, the way the pit shows Dr. Robbie's PTSD is really, really beautiful. It shows the vulnerability that comes with it, it shows the reality of even when we're a trusted individual, respected adult, like we are not immune from the effects of trauma and dealing with a bad time. No matter how resilient, how strong we are, it can get to us, and there is nothing wrong with that. We're human. If some if something if something's never got to us, that would be a problem, right? How how come we're not feeling things the way we're meant to? One show that does a really good portrayal of therapy and grief and recovery is Never Have I Ever, which is Mindy Kelling's Netflix show. Now, opinions about Mindy Kelling aside, because I know some people find it controversial how she often shows South Asian leads falling in love with white men, and it's like a consistent theme in all of her shows, even though all of her shows are actually really good. Unfortunately, I like Mindy Kelling. I can get past the gota pakona stereotypes that she puts up because the shows she do are really funny. I love seeing ground people on TV, okay? I love it. But Davy in the show goes through the sudden death of her father, and she's regularly seeing a therapist. And Dr. Ryan, the therapist, is referred to all the time. And it's really refreshing to see a South Asian girl, especially a teenager, go through something traumatic and then have the appropriate supports put in place. How often do we know people in our community around us who have gone through something traumatic and never sought professional supports for it? Davy was a 15-year-old girl when her dad died, and her mom did the right thing and put her in therapy. She was able to go to it regularly. The show doesn't treat it as like this novel thing or the shameful thing. It treats it as like this is just normal. This is like a natural next step for Davy. You know, Davy is young, she goes through something traumatic, she loses a parent, and now she's in therapy. And now she's talking about how therapy impacts her life. It is really, really nice to see that. And not only is that nice, but it's also nice to see the therapist, the psychiatrist, Dr. Ryan, being portrayed as like a real person and not just like this old person, old white dude mainly, with a notepad and a couch. Like the show understands that therapy can be playful, it can be warm and welcoming, and it doesn't have to be clinical. And it also doesn't have to be something that's unique or novel, it is just a part of our journey. We can go into therapy, go out of therapy. We can do it for you know six months straight, twice a month for a long time, or we can not go to therapy for a year because everything feels fine. And what's most important is it's normal. There's nothing wrong about it because everybody could use a little bit of help now and then. Now we kind of talked about two sides, or we've talked of not even two sides of the spectrum, but a lot of binaries where it's like this is good representation, this is bad representation, this is the villainization trope, this is the romantic romanticization trope. So I want to talk about something that's kind of in between where it's both good and bad.

Adolescence And A Nuanced Middle Ground

SPEAKER_00 29:07

It's just complicated, all right? So this Netflix Limited series came out in 2025, and it was one of the most talked-about shows in years, okay? The show is called Adolescence, and if you haven't watched it, I'll tell you what it's about quickly. And if you haven't watched it and you want to, and you're about to be upset about a spoiler, you've had a year to watch this, my friend. Your chances are up, all right? Spoiler time. It follows a 13-year-old Jamie Miller who's arrested for the murder of a classmate. Again, 13 years old teen boy, Jamie Miller, who is arrested for the murder of a classmate. And each episode is filmed in a single take, which is really impressive at like point blank, period, but it gives us this feeling of like really raw, uncomfortable intensity that normally you don't see on TV because things are edited and split up and broken. And mental health is absolutely central to this show, but in a way that's nuanced enough to make you think rather than just feel like good or bad about it. There's no correct way to feel. It's just it's a mixed bag of things, and you really gotta watch the show to understand. Now, the show doesn't say that Jamie has mental illness or that's why he did it if he did it. And honestly, if that were the case, it would be really lazy storytelling. And instead, the show shows you this really complicated struggle of a boy who is struggling with things that a lot of other teens experience: social isolation, being the victim of bullying, having an inability to express your emotions because no one taught you how to express them outside of the common emotions that men are told to express their feelings with, which is happiness and anger. You're not allowed to be sad, you're not allowed to be jealous, you're allowed to be angry, and you're allowed to be happy, and that's it. And it covers this kind of dangerous slide into online incel ideology. And the trauma isn't one big thing, it's death by a thousand cuts. It's just this accumulation of disconnection from society, from family, from peers, and from any sort of resource or language or education that can help him identify what he's feeling. Child psychiatrists who have reviewed the show and given their takes on it have noted that it covers something really real about how teenagers experience this emotional repression, especially boys. And it can be dangerous when you fall into the wrong kind of online community or in-person community. Young people, especially boys, struggle to find belonging. And more and more people are finding it in online spaces, but online spaces are more and more becoming spaces where people will profit off of our attention and misery and addictions. So if you're scrolling through Instagram or TikTok and suddenly out of nowhere you're seeing these meta-rayband POVs, and this guy pulls out his phone, he's like, Oh, I'm just gonna hit a pack on Rainbow. In this middle of this funny, shareable meme that seems digestible and harmless is an ad for crypto online gambling. That's absurd! If you told me that this is what's happening to young people like 10 years ago, I'd say you're crazy and you should get back in your spaceship and go back to your planet because that is not happening on this earth, and here it is happening. So we see this isolation of young people, especially boys, and it talks about the family failure, the failure of schools, communities, and peer groups to keep us connected and feel like we're a part of something bigger. So that's why it's such a complicated portrayal. And you can definitely see Jamie experience all these things and think back to someone who you knew in high school. Do you see this happening to someone in your classes? This isolation, this ostracization, this extremist ideology taking place. Now we've talked a lot about how there have been good and bad representations and complicated representations. And if there's anything that you've learned from this, it's that you gotta watch more TV. Alright. Watch The Pit, watch Euphoria if it's age appropriate for you, watch Um Bojack Horseman is great. I actually I love that show. If I can swing Bojack Horseman from a South Asian lens, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it, alright? I think it'll be so fun. If I can do that, I'm gonna do an entire episode on Bojack Horseman. I love that show. I probably have seen that show seven or eight times, and I haven't watched it in maybe four years, and the reason why I haven't watched it in four years is because I've been doing pretty well mentally, okay? I haven't had the big sad, so the show just doesn't hit the same when you're not depressed. So if you are going through a depressive episode or life just doesn't feel that great, watch Bojack Horseman. That to re-watch that show while in the height of my depression when I was diagnosed as a person with depressive uh tendencies or depression disorder, that oh, it was just so good. I have it's not very often that you're moved by a piece of art like that. And I really was because it was the right form of art, I was at the right stage of life for it, and it was so beautiful. And even now, as I'm in a very happy place and a very like mentally healthy place, I can look back on that time and find the silver lining of because I was facing such a rough time in my head and in my life, I got to enjoy a piece of art like Bojack Horseman to its fullest potential. The fullest potential. Um, for example, I saw the statue of Nike on the ship with the wings, and she's headless, and it's in um, I believe the Louvre, and it was so beautiful and so gorgeous, and she looks so strong and mighty and powerful. And I'm in my strong, mighty, and powerful era. Okay, I'm a strong gal. I saw that and I was like, whoa, this is hitting different. This is the right piece of art for me at the right time in my life. Now, speaking of the right piece of art, we're gonna talk about good representation in media for mental illness.

What Good Representation Should Include

SPEAKER_00 35:41

First, we gotta show people that recovery is real and it has to be seen. So much media treats mental illness as something that makes you dangerous, or it defines you forever, or you're only ever in the bad parts of being diagnosed with a mental illness. But the truth is, recovery is common. You can learn to manage your life with the mental illness. There's proper treatments, there's proper medications, and it's not linear. It's not gonna be a straight shoot towards recovery, but it is a process and it is possible, but popular media doesn't show that recovery and that healing story because it's boring. It doesn't make for good TV, it's trial and error, and it can be challenging, and it'll be one of the hardest things we do in our life, but it can happen. Second thing is that diversity matters, it's not just white men out here who are experiencing mental illness, okay? There is racial diversity through diversity in gender, sexuality, class, and cultural backgrounds. Okay, mental illness doesn't just happen to one subset of people, it happens to everyone equally. If you got a brain, you got a mental health. If you got a brain, there's a chance you might have mental illness. Three is that medication and therapy should be normalized, not stigmatized. It should not be this clinical experience. It should feel good, it should help you, you should connect with your professional support. And fourth, mental illness is not shorthand for evil villain. Characters can be complex, menacing, morally compromised, but the thing that makes it evil should not be primarily a diagnosis of a mental illness. That's just lazy story writing and it's incredibly stigmatizing. Now, I'm a pretty forgiving person. I'm not a big fan of cancel culture in the sense of you can learn from your mistakes. If you enjoy a piece of media that is very problematic in its portrayal of people experiencing mental health issues or being diagnosed with mental illness, I don't think that makes you a terrible person. Do I think that you know, portraying people with mental illness as evil or as this savant with this amazing talent that is brought on entirely by their mental illness and nothing else, then yeah, that's kind of not nice or accurate. And when you don't have a lot of education about what mental illness looks like, or what borderline personality disorder looks like, or what bipolar looks like, and your only exposure to these mental illnesses is TV and media when throughout our long, gracious lives, when we do meet someone who has that mental illness diagnoses, we might have these not so great stereotypes and stigmas come up, or we assume they're dangerous or unstable or untrustworthy or unreliable. And the truth is, these disorders are manageable with the right treatment, the right environment, the right medication. A lot of mental illnesses are manageable. There are people that walk around amongst us with some really common mental illnesses like anxiety, ADHD, depression, PTSD. And yet somehow we all happen to be functioning members of society that aren't going around doing like serial killer level horrors to people? Shocking. I know. We really gotta evaluate the depictions of mental illness in media because really, truly, for some people, that is their only exposure to a person with that disorder, that diagnosis. Even think about it now. How many people do you know in your life who have a mental illness diagnosis that you've seen in TVs and movies portrayed as a villain? There's a very good chance that you may not know someone. But again, when you do meet someone eventually in your life, you don't want to go into that conversation of meeting this new person with these presumptions about what their medical history does for them. Give people a chance to tell you their story. Give people a chance to accept that mental illnesses are real, that they're not the be-all end-all of your life. There is recovery, there is treatment, there is a possibility to be a functioning adult in society with friends, with a significant other, with a job. Being able to contribute, pay your taxes, having a mental illness does not make you weird or odd or capable of more evil than any other human being on this planet. And it's really important to remember, and when we think about communities that may have less access to mental health education, it those portrayals can be really impactful.

Recommendations, Listener Requests, Closing

SPEAKER_00 40:35

So, one thing I really want from you guys is let me know what South Asian media I should watch in terms of mental health and mental illness portrayals. Is there a movie that you're thinking of that's like, whoa, that was kind of messed up how they portrayed this disorder? Let me know and I'll cover it in a future episode. I think that would be so fun. I personally don't watch a lot of Bollywood, I don't watch a lot of Indian TV shows, so it would be really enjoyable to watch it through my mental health western lens and then see just kind of what kind of discussions can we create out of that. I think it would be so fun. It is time for us to wrap it up here. It has been an amazing well-being Wednesday. I feel like I have yapped like I've never yapped before, and join me next week as we yap again. Thank you for everyone who's tuned in. You can stay up to date with our podcasts on our socials at the Universal Radio. And make sure to stream us wherever you get your podcasts. Apple, Spotify. We don't discriminate, okay? Just come listen to us. We're a good time. This has been Grigit, and I want you to keep turning it up with us.