One of the things we address frequently on this blog is the importance of removing stigmas attached to mental illness. Film portrayals of individuals with mental illnesses are not always accurate, and they don’t necessarily do any good in removing stigmas. We enjoyed McSweeney’s parody of how mental illness is depicted in film, and we decided to share it here for the purpose of highlighting the gap between what mental illness is and how it’s often portrayed in entertainment media. If you or a loved one have been diagnosed with a mental illness and experienced the reality of living with it, we hope you’ll enjoy this humorous indictment of inconsistent fictional representations. If you don’t have first-hand experience with mental illness, we hope this excerpt, and the linked full article, will alert you to the shortcomings of some popular characterizations. (Note: there is some crass language in this article, so we have ***ed a couple of words in the excerpt below.)
HI, I’M A MENTALLY ILL PERSON AS PORTRAYED IN A MOVIE!
BY JEFFREY BLUM
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Hi, there! I have a VERY serious mental health problem, one that cannot be helped with medicine or therapy. However, I can make great strides by finding fulfillment through dance, meeting a good friend who’s going through some s*** of his own right now, or getting into a romantic relationship and then seeing that relationship temporarily hit a snag but then work out after we make up at a bus depot.
When I’m a woman I am mainly concerned with how my illness affects the emotional arc of some guy. When I’m a man it’s more likely that my illness manifests itself in me being really good at math. And yelling. If I am a male mentally ill person I do lots of yelling. As a woman my mental illness cannot be allowed to preclude my f***ability, so I do less yelling.
Sometimes my illness seems all encompassing and inescapable; sometimes it goes away for all of act II. It varies depending on my mood, whether my relationship with Bradley Cooper is going well, and the tempo of the Shins song in the background.