Entertainment and Mental Illness in the USA

Television and film are a part of everyday life in America. Some of us host watching parties for the Oscars and Emmys to see if our favorites won. We live vicariously through characters and plot lines. We connect to characters on a spiritual level, especially if they share the same struggles as us. If you’re someone who struggles with mental illness (and if you’re reading this post, you probably do) then it’s particularly personal when you hear a character shares the same mental illness as you. Then you watch the film or show and you think to yourself, “What in the actual heck are they talking about?” Granted, the television industry has done a better job of depicting mental illness in recent years, especially with shows like Euphoria and Bojack Horseman. But there’s still the question of how the media’s portrayal of mental illness impacts an audience’s understanding and perceptions of mental illness and the stigmas associated with it. 

Audience + Narratives about mental illness=?

We connect to characters on a spiritual level, especially if they share the same struggles as us. If you’re someone who struggles with mental illness (and if you’re reading this post, you probably do) then it’s particularly personal when you hear a character shares the same mental illness as you. Then you watch the film or show and you think to yourself, “What in the actual heck are they talking about?”  Granted, the television industry has done a better job of depicting mental illness in recent years, especially with shows like Euphoria and Bojack Horseman. However, it’s the inaccurate, romanticized portrayal of mental illness that poses a big threat to audiences.  

It has been estimated that one in four Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness. For an issue that so affects so many people in the United States, you would think that the film and entertainment industry would do a better job of accurately depicting mental illness. One of the biggest gaps in research regarding mental illness in the media is how audiences are impacted by narratives surrounding mental illness.

“Narrative Processing of Entertainment Media and Mental Illness”

In 2011, Nicole Mossing Caputo conducted a study to address the primary processes in an audience’s perception on a film’s depiction of mental illness. Stigmas were defined in terms of behavioral avoidance, namely social distancing. This study was conducted before the world got flipped upside down with COVID, so social distancing is not referring to the tw years where we could only see our closest friends and family (and when we all went a little insane). She centered her study around a concept called transportation theory and how it affects audience’s perception of mental illness and the subsequent stigmatization of mentally ill people. Caputo’s study investigated the relationship between transportation into a narrative and perceived mental illness stigma based on genre (fiction or nonfiction) and character identification. 

Transportation Theory

In her study, Caputo used a transportation theory approach. This is a fancy way of saying that according to transportation theory, people process the message of films (and all media) differently based on how strongly they relate to the content and message. Hence the name: the more an individual feels ‘transported’ in a story, the stronger of a reaction they’ll have. The mental process of transportation is an “integrative melding of attention, imagery and feeling, focused on story events” which is connected to how immersed an individual is in a story. Most importantly is the fact that transportation can lead to belief change. While most people know the feeling of when you get so engrossed in a book or movie that you don’t notice anything that’s happening in your environment, you never forget your past or who you are. This is why prior experience, or familiarity, is so important when it comes to how transportation can shape.

It’s no surprise that the majority of people have a negative stereotype about mental illness based on how it’s projected by the media. Most characters in TV/film that have a mental illness are often presented based on the existing stereotypes surrounding the specific mental illness. For example, characters with schizophrenia are almost always presented as extremely violent and dangerous when in reality individuals who suffer from schizophrenia are not all violent. However, because of this enduring presentation of schizophrenia in TV, film, and media in general, the majority of people equate schizophrenia with violence. While we do know that the media’s portrayal of mental illness causes the audience to believe and internalize the stereotypes about mental illness, there’s a lot more that’s unknown.

What did this study find out?

The results of this study showed that there was no significant difference in social distancing stigmatization between the fiction and nonfiction groups. However, participants who thought the narrative was relatable to their own life showed less social distancing than viewers who were not transported. This aspect of relevance and relatability to the narrative was the strongest impact of the study, with character identification being next.