We’re all used to the portrayal of people with a current or previous history of mental health problems as violent. If you work in the field then it is a daily issue when visiting patients outrside mental health units as the stigma associated with mental illnesses is prevalent in our colleagues from other disciplines. The Guardian today has an interesting piece that discusses a piece or work by the Glasgow Media Group, entitled “Making a Drama out of a Crisis.” The report states that “Some of this study suggests that mental illness is still used as an easy source of violent tragedy or as something to poke fun at.”
According to the Guardian:
“[The report] examined three months of drama programmes on British terrestrial channels between 4pm and 11pm from 1 January this year. It found 74 episodes from 34 different programmes contained mental illness-related story lines.Of those story lines, there were 33 instances of violence towards others, including a character in Channel 4’s Shameless attacking her partner, and an escaped schizophrenic patient in Channel 5’s CSI:NY killing people to avenge his girlfriend’s murder.
There were also 48 instances of additional types of harm, including the Emmerdale character Sally Spode drugging and sleeping with a vicar to break up his family. Some 53 instances of self-harm were also recorded.”