What haunts you at night?

For many kids, monsters live under their bed and in their closets. Monsters are great villains… but only for kids? When you turn to adult movies or games, the true monsters are those that are invisible, mental illnesses that affecting the “bad guys”. But.. but… but… I have a mental illness, does that mean I am a monster/bad gal/villain/ other? Of course not, but in video games I would be.

Lindsay of Polygon made a great comment in his article about mental illness and video games, “ It’s a brush-off and a hand-wave, painting mental illness as a magical black box we can neither see into nor ever hope to understand, rather than as a condition that real human people with brains and feelings and mortgages live with on a daily basis.” The majority of villains attributes are that of the brain, insanity. A lot of games have insanity meters that show the level that the surroundings affect your character. These ways of representing mental illness are harmful to everyone.

To those with a mental illness, being represented this way in a video game is not beneficial. Many times, the monsters that are created from a mental illness are dehumanized. Also, creating a villain of mental illness halts the conversations around mental illness and creates a bad stigma. Because who wants to be associated with a villain/monster? If there were better ways to include mental illness in video games, producers probably would not use them anyways. They would be taking a risk with not making it into a horror video game. So, if these kinds of games are harmful to those with mental illnesses, how about those without out one?

To those without a mental illness, games like these are not beneficial either. The horror games with mental illness as a bad characteristic provides no positive dialogue around mental illnesses. These games do not create conversations about how people in real life are actually affected by mental illnesses. Many games have the same characteristics of insanity that does not truly represent the wide range of symptoms of mental illnesses and how they vary from one to another.

How can this be changed? There are some games that are using mental illnesses as a characteristic of a character, but it is not the only one that matters. Actual Sunlight has a character with major depressive disorder, but he is also a worker and tenant and a family member. The goal of the game is to be able to step back far enough to see how all of the characteristics fit together to form his life. It is trying to show how depression can influence a majority of his interactions and thought processes. (polygon) There are other games that are coming out that are similar in the fashion that the mental illness is not the most important factor, but still a major part of the character’s make up.

It looks as though there is some change happening and coming to us… but will it be enough to change the conversation of mental health and video games?

Reference:

https://www.polygon.com/2014/7/21/5923095/mental-health-gaming-silent-hill