Trigger Warning: Mentions of mental health, mental illness, suicide and mental health treatment.
I’m sure those reading this article have seen at least one horror or psychological thriller film. The beginning of every horror film shows an unsettling character in an asylum, escaping an asylum, speaking with a mental health professional or displaying mental illness symptoms. Historically, horror films have a consistent theme of correlating murder with mental illness. Here are some examples:
Halloween
A successful franchise, begins with showing Michael Myers murdering his older sister Judith on a Halloween night and then being hospitalized in Warren County’s Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. He escapes the sanitarium, returning and stalking his little sister Laurie Strode and killing her friends. Ultimately, he is stopped by his psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis. All 13 movies within this franchise center around Michael Myers hunting down Laurie and murdering anyone who gets in his way.
Joker
Aspiring stand-up comedian and clown Arthur Fleck lives in Gotham with his mom. A city with crime and unemployment, where resources aren’t equally spread, leaves many people disenfranchised. Within the film, Arthur is told by his social worker that he can no longer receive mental health treatment. Due to Arthur’s low income, he can no longer receive medication. Arthur’s life goes downhill from there. He is isolated, bullied and disregarded by society continuously; and is violently attacked. His coworker buys him a gun, but during his job entertaining at a children’s hospital, his gun falls out, and he is fired. On the way home, he is still wearing his clown mask, but he gets attacked again by three Wayne Enterprise Businessmen. He shoots two men in self-defense and executes the third. Billionaire mayor candidate Thomas Wayne condemns the murders and says that people are envious of successful people and they’re clowns. People against Thomas Wayne begin protesting by wearing clown masks. Ultimately, his mental health deteriorates into madness. He experiences romantic delusions with his next-door neighbor, murders his ex-coworker, confesses to train murders and rants about society on live tv, killing the popular tv show host Murray. Rioters erupt throughout Gotham, and one rioter murders Thomas Wayne and his wife. While he is arrested, rioters wearing clown masks end up crashing into the car he was in and freeing him. He then dances to the crowd’s cheers when they all wear clown masks. At the film’s end, he is seen at Arkham, a mental hospital, where he escapes the orderlies and is seen with bloody footprints.
How asylums in horror films further mental illness stigmas
- It perpetuates the idea that people who leave mental hospitals will be violent and dangerous
- That getting mental health treatment won’t help
- It’s evil or demonic
- That people with mental illnesses are crazy
- Mental deterioration leads to violence toward others
- People with mental illnesses need to be locked away
- That it’s haunted
What is mental health treatment
- Psychotherapy
- Medication
- Case Management
- Hospitalization/Structured Outpatient
- Support Group
- Complementary & Alternative Medicine
- Self Care Plan
- Safety Planning Intervention
- Peer Support
Split
It tells the story of Kevin Wendell, who has Dissociative Identity Disorder(DID) with 23 personalities. The movie shows Kevin discussing this with his psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher. Eventually, another personality emerges, the beast, dominating the others, and ultimately leading Kevin to abduct three teenage girls in a parking lot. The entire film depicts Kevin turning into this beast, who is a cannibalistic monster with super abilities and believes that those who have not suffered are impure. Casey, one of the kidnapped teenage girls, was spared because of her past trauma. As seen in Split and Glass, Kevin experienced severe abuse from his mother; a scene shows Kevin’s mother going after him with a hot iron when he was young.
How Split Harmfully portrays did
- Supernatural with special abilities
- People with DID are violent
- People can’t trust people with DID
- Interacting with someone with DID will be terrorizing
- Symptoms are grandiose
- It looks too otherworldly to be real
- It’s obvious
- People with DID are out of control
- That it’s all the person is
What is DID?
- A dissociative disorder
- Two or more distinct identities or personality states
- Amnesia, gaps in recalling everyday events, personal information, and/or traumatic events
- Out-of-body experience
- A coping mechanism to shut themselves away from an experience or situation that is too violent, traumatic, or painful to experience consciously
- Response to environmental stress; history of recurring trauma at a developmental stage of childhood
- Each personality controls the individual’s thoughts and behaviors
- Distressed or have trouble functioning in one or two more major areas of life
- Depression
- Suicidal thoughts or self-harm
mental illness in film vs. Mental illness in real life
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “Nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (52.9 million in 2020).” A lot of people in this country, just counting adults, have a mental illness, but it is rarely represented in film. According to Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Angel Choi, Dr. Katherine Pieper and Dr. Christine Moutier in the USC Annenburg article Mental Health Conditions in Film & TV: Portrayals that Dehumanize and Triviatilize Characters, “Out of 4,598 characters in film 1.7% experience a mental health condition and out of 1,220 characters in TV 7% experience a mental health condition.” When mental illnesses are mentioned in films, it is through mockery, humor and for shock value.
| Disparagement | Humor | Concealment | Total # of Characters | |
| Film | 47% | 22% | 15% | 87 |
| TV | 38% | 50% | 12% | 32 |
Mental health Myths
These are the two mental health myths that I notice are consistent within horror films:
- People with mental health problems are violent and unpredictable
- Mental health problems don’t affect me
Movies and TV shows that use mental illnesses as an accessory ignore that mental illness significantly impacts everyone. Portraying all these harmful myths negates that so many people are struggling and seek mental health treatment for help, just like any other illness. In addition, exhibiting only people with severe symptoms suffer, but that is not true.
According to MentalHealth.Gov:
Most people with mental illnesses are not violent, and only 3% to 5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a severe mental illness.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health:
- In 2020, among 52.9 million adults with any mental illness, 24.3 million (46.2%) recieved mental health services within the year
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Suicide Data: United States
- 45,979 Americans died by suicide
- 3rd leading cause of death for ages 10-19
- 2nd leading cause of death for ages 20-34
- 1.2 million Americans attempted suicide
- 90% of those who died by suicide had a mental health condition at the time of their death
- 54% of Americans have been impacted by suicide in some way
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Suicide Data: Illinois
- 15th leading cause of death
- 3rd leading cause of death for ages 10-24
- 75.94% of communities did not have enough mental health providers to serve residents in 2021, according to federal guidelines
- 40% of all suicides were from firearms
Illinois Laws on Suicide:
- Crisis lines and 988 implementation
- Mental health parity
- K-12 school suicide prevention
- Health professional training in suicide assessment, treatment and management
- Conversion therapy bans
- University and college campus suicide prevention
Mental illnesses, mental health treatment and suicide aren’t fun or an aesthetic; it’s a public health crisis. So, watch your favorite horror films during this spooky season and see how they dramatize or romanticize mental illness symptoms and mental health treatment.
Here are some other links to sources I used: