4 Ways Romanticizing Mental Illness Is Making the Stigma of It Worse
False portrayal is worse than no portrayal.
Mental illness has always been stigmatized within society. This stigma has extended to the world of TV and social media as well. In most TV shows and the news, mental illness is associated with weird and violent behaviors. From portraying mental and personality disorders as traits of murderers and psychopaths to depression and anxiety as traits of unstable teenagers, mental illness has been stigmatized.
Another direction of portraying mental illness in media and literature is, romanticizing the effects of mental illness on people suffering from it, or their circle of friends and family.
This approach of romanticizing mental illness may have started as an approach to eliminate and decrease the stigma surrounding the topic. However, romanticizing mental illness caused more harm to people struggling with some sort of mental illness than it did in removing the stigma.
As a person who struggled with depression and who has a partner who is struggling with PTSD, I find that the way mental illness is portrayed in media maybe removing the old stigma while building a new one.
Though the efforts made by media may not intentionally aim to romanticize mental illness…
