# The Romanticizing of Mental illness.



## Kazoo The Kid (May 26, 2013)

Anyone else notice this in todays culture? Its always the anti-social genius. (and by anti social I mean anti-social to a unhealthy extent). The disturbed artist. The sick poet.

It seemed that in todays society we associate insanity with successful and intelligence. Which is creating of culture of people who find mental illness cool instead of it actually being looked at as an illness. Which undermines mental illness as whole.

I was watching this show called "Perception" on TNT and the main chararcter has schizophrenia and his hallucinations help him solves crimes and I found it borderline offensive. As I have a friend which suffers from schizophrenia and hallucinations are by no mean...helpful.


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## CaptSwan (Mar 31, 2013)

It's nothing new. Many books, films and TV shows have used the "mental illness" angle. And, sometimes; they depict them in a very accurate way; however, TV doesn't fall in this category. The problem is they have to keep the show running; and, a garden variety schizophrenic can give you a good episode; but you need a gimmick if you want the show to work. It's horrible, but it's how it is.


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## LadyO.W.BernieBro (Sep 4, 2010)

Yeah, it definitely isn't new, although l do notice how it's becoming the new normal. Things tend to become widespread and saturated more heavily in this culture.

l will employ my standby excuse of blaming the internet.


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## tangosthenes (Oct 29, 2011)

The romanticizing of something usually signals its irrelevancy to mainstream concerns... not good.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Not to mention Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory or Abed from Community as supposedly having Asperger's. As someone diagnosed with Asperger's, I don't really care. I think making these things more mainstream will perhaps help with more acceptance in society for those diagnosed with these disorders. There is also risk of putting them into different boxes though.


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## ptarmigan (Jul 19, 2010)

I would see it as people having some interest or curiosity in seeing the world through different perspectives, or at least it seems natural for people to enjoy unique characters with their own kind of struggles. Even if it's total fiction and the writers are making some ridiculous caricature of a mental illness much more crippling or devastating than what is dramatized or or if just barely anything like it at all, it's still something in people's minds of someone unique and different from themselves, and perhaps the most beneficial work it does is makes the mental disorder, at least in name, feel more familiar to them. If you can know someone "personally" who has a certain disorder, even if their image of it is just from a TV show, it still puts it on the map for people and they feel less inclined to fear it and more inclined to want to help or reach out. They will better see the human beyond the name of the disorder, and that they originally accomplished this through misinformation is less important. It's still something.


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

I don't this, I don't like this at all.
It's like when Percy Jackson used dyslexia as a way to difference demigods from humans and the characters don't show any sign of it expect they fail at school. Dyslexia doesn't make you fail at school, I never failed a year because of it.
Annoying and stupid.
I had a friend who read so much about it and she started to believe that she has Borderline Personality Disorder even though the doctors told her she was perfectly okay. Because of this she's super popular on deviantART and uses this as an excuse for her dark sexual fantasies about rape and torture.


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## Icchavati (Aug 4, 2013)

I hate this. It's always done by people who have no idea what it's like to have the condition and hardly think of the people _actually suffering_ from these disorders and instead just think of how it's different than what they're like so must be magical. I have synesthesia, which people see as all artsy and dreamlike, but really it massively sucks.


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

I think this is how metal illness should be treated in the media but I'm asking too much


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## RaidenPrime (Aug 4, 2012)

I think mental illness makes media interesting, and markets well. It's something someone can't experience unless they are mentally ill, so people become captivated by the concept. However when it comes to a real mentally ill person, if someone is in love with them, they'd better be ready to either experience and be able to handle their person's instability, and accept them for who they are. 

You want to find your OCD detective like Monk? You'd better be able to find him, and help him leave the bathroom first! Not because he hasn't shaved his face properly, but because his intrusive thoughts make it hard to leave the bathroom.


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## StElmosDream (May 26, 2012)

I found this show Touch (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia about a severely autistic boy that predicts the future from numbers and dates hard to stomach, especially when the premise seems to be playing to 'Rainman savantism' stereotypes as a 'consellation prize' of sorts... when at least Perception incorporated the main characters experience as a neuropsychologist that just happens to experience delusions 'from the subconscious mind', alongside self awareness.


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

StElmosDream said:


> I found this show Touch (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia about a severely autistic boy that predicts the future from numbers and dates hard to stomach, especially when the premise seems to be playing to 'Rainman savantism' stereotypes as a 'consellation prize' of sorts... when at least Perception incorporated the main characters experience as a neuropsychologist that just happens to experience delusions 'from the subconscious mind', alongside self awareness.


I heard about that show, I didn't watch because I didn't like the idea of the autistic boy helping in crime because he can see things in the future, somehow that seemed wrong to me.


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## Pogona Vitticeps (Mar 18, 2013)

I think glorifying mental illness is stupid. It can prevent people who suffers from them from getting taken seriously and get help just because some braindead bastard decided that it's cool to be unable to sleep(wihtout medication.) or whatever symptome/illness he/she fancied.


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## Fern (Sep 2, 2012)

"You think this torment is romantic, but it's not-except to you" 
~ Emilie Autumn; _Swallow_.


There's some misconception that mental illness brings about special revelations or powers inaccessible to "normal" people. Not so necessarily.


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## Rainbow (Aug 30, 2010)

Psychology is business, man. "Who do you want to be?" Even the MBTI and enneagram makes people money.


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## Hurricane Matthew (Nov 9, 2012)

Speaking as someone who has struggled with depression and autism, I'll say that I don't mind mentally ill characters. However, I don't like the mental illness being such a _central_ aspect of the character. It always ends up as the main detail of the character, defining that character. I don't like that and I think a mentally ill character is much easier to relate to and enjoy if the mental illness was just another aspect of their self and not what defines them so much. I know in my life, I don't like being defined by my mental illness. It's a part of my personality, yeah, but no more important than other parts of my personality. I'm an INDIVIDUAL and an illness does not make me who I am. Real people have many layers and details; we're more than our illness. A well-made character would have many more details that makes that character who he/she is. 

I really don't like the way autistic characters are portrayed. They're always shown as super geniuses when in reality, high intelligence is no more common in the autistic population than it is in the non-autistic population. A lot of us are average... and some are mentally retarded.


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## StElmosDream (May 26, 2012)

Matthew Nisshoku said:


> I really don't like the way autistic characters are portrayed. They're always shown as super geniuses when in reality, high intelligence is no more common in the autistic population than it is in the non-autistic population. A lot of us are average... and some are mentally retarded.


Or as DSM V rebrands 'retarded' Intellectual Developmental Disorder when retarded as a word is often confused with arrested development or foolhardiness or even asynchronous development of essential life pre requisites... Still seems as if IDD will never become mainstream ;-)


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## Empress Appleia Cattius XII (Dec 22, 2010)

The year I suffered from acute panic disorder was without a doubt the worst in my life.
It actually makes me cringe when mental illness is romanticised, I know how bad it can be and I know there are people who have much more horrific conditions than I had. 

I should also point out (for the tortured genius angle) that I dropped out of college, lost the majority of my friends and sat at home doing nothing, unemployed. There was no 'mad genius' moments.


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## Purrfessor (Jul 30, 2013)

I have schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, and OCD. I know what it's like to struggle. However I don't mind seeing mental illness romanticized. It gives me hope that it's not all bad. Perception was a really cool show. I didn't believe for a second I was like him but I could imagine being like him... I wished my schizophrenia was like his.


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## Chesire Tower (Jan 19, 2013)

Matthew Nisshoku said:


> Speaking as someone who has struggled with depression and autism, I'll say that I don't mind mentally ill characters. However, I don't like the mental illness being such a _central_ aspect of the character. It always ends up as the main detail of the character, defining that character. I don't like that and I think a mentally ill character is much easier to relate to and enjoy if the mental illness was just another aspect of their self and not what defines them so much. I know in my life, I don't like being defined by my mental illness. It's a part of my personality, yeah, but no more important than other parts of my personality. I'm an INDIVIDUAL and an illness does not make me who I am. Real people have many layers and details; we're more than our illness. A well-made character would have many more details that makes that character who he/she is.
> 
> I really don't like the way autistic characters are portrayed. They're always shown as super geniuses when in reality, high intelligence is no more common in the autistic population than it is in the non-autistic population. A lot of us are average... and some are mentally retarded.


While I definitely agree with you, that that would be the ideal; I still think that romanticising mental illness is far better than shaming it - which all too often happens IRL. Hopefully, future depictions of individual emotional suffering (because I actually don't like the words, "mental illness"); will become far more realistic in the future.


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