Adds for Mental Health
My first taste of horror as a kid were the warning adds for smoking. Between the bright colors and goofy antics of my Saturday morning cartoons, one of these commercials would pop up like a prom night pimple. I watched puffs of curling smoke corrode throats, the pink healthy tissue of lungs desiccate and blacken, and pearly whites veer to yokel yellow.
Later, drugs were the villain of these parables: literally deflated teens, frying eggs to represent the frying of brain cells, and a somehow really uncomfortable stop-motion drawing with a guy and his dog.
However, I’ve noticed something that bugs me. The media really doesn’t make the same effort with mental health. Sure, more people are vocal about their own mental health these days, public figure or not. Actor Chris Wood has a great awareness campaign called IDONTMIND, which discusses anxiety, depression, and the like. There are online therapy programs like Talkspace, which works to meet your budget and give you the top care of excellent therapists. But these initiatives are not spliced into our everyday viewing like the “war on drugs” is.
Yes, there are commercials about mental health, but only if they are comingling with medication. It’s the same narrative, no different from a commercial for bladder control or psoriasis. There is a focus on a man or woman, reasonably attractive, narrating their…
