The earliest of mental illness portrayal in film is The Maniac Cook (1909) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000956/) by director D. W. Griffith. This film introduces a deranged mental patient who is perilously violent. This film began perpetuating the stigma of a “homicidal maniac” which would soon become a foundation of plot building in horror films (Hyler 2 http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/stigma-continues-hollywood). Popular horror movies use characters with psychosis to create an uncomfortable vibe throughout the movie. While the idea behind a horror movie is to scare the audience, using characters with explicit mental illnesses creates the ideas in the audience that mental illness is inherently violent.
However, horror movies are more likely to use men with psychosis when looking at the homicidal maniac stereotype before they choose a woman with psychosis. In movies such as The Shining (1980) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/), the “homicidal maniac” image is a male. The idea that masculinity is inherently violent shows up in numerous horror movies and is detrimental to how men with mental illness are perceived in real life (Fruhwirth 37). By connecting mental illness, violence, and masculinity all in one place, the stigma becomes that men with mental illness are naturally violent. It becomes a way to justify violence in real life that may just be a product of masculinity. When white men commit a fatal crime such as murder or domestic terrorism, the conversation of his masculinity or his whiteness is not entertained (Fruhwirth 37). The conversation shifts to how he probably has a mental illness where psychosis is a symptom.
Horror movies entertain the idea that horror should be based off mental illness rather than holding men accountable further when they play off psychotic symptoms as focal point of terror rather than the white masculinity, even if the white masculinity is more obvious in the context. The audience of horror movies shun those will mental illness while giving white masculinity a pass even though not all people who have psychosis are white men while 64% of mass shootings are committed by white men (Ford 8 http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/27/us/mass-shootings/). Images of men with mental illness become detrimental to real life when men who are criminals are no longer held accountable for their actions, yet all people with mental illness are treated as though their psychosis is what will make them dangerous (Tartakovsky 7 http://psychcentral.com/lib/medias-damaging-depictions-of-mental-illness/). Movies like The Shining (1980) show a stereotypical masculine, white man with a beard and a husky figure that becomes deranged enough, because of psychotic episodes, to murder his love interest.
Psychosis is constantly the token mental disorder in horror movies to characterize the antagonist of the film. It is easy to make psychosis horrifying when psychosis is defined as “a severe mental disorder characterized by gross impairment in reality testing, typically manifested by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or disorganized or catatonic behavior (Goodwin 201).” When the definition contains elements that people who are neurotypical do not understand, they categorize people who do deal with psychosis as an “other” and “other” is seen as scary.
The misconception that people with mental illness are violent creates so much tension that when someone walks into a counseling office they are more likely to be asked, “Have you ever thought about harming anyone else?” before they are asked about self-harm. Self-mutilation occurs among 4% of adults, 15% of teenagers, and a risk of 17%-35% among college students (“Self-Injury (Cutting, Self-Harm or Self-Mutilation)” 4 http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/self-injury), whereas only 4.3% of all people with mental illness are likely to harm others (Stuart 123 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/). Due to the use of mentally ill characters in horror movies, the public considers the notion that every person with a mental illness is more likely to hurt others, creating a sense of fear among the public that results in the ostracism of those with mental illnesses.
Creators of horror films blatantly disregard the prominent push of stigma in horror films by depicting both people who experience mental illness inaccurately. Stigmatizing content seen in the early days of cinema in horror movies such as The Maniac Cook (1909) continue to persist in modern film. Themes such as a mentally ill character being a homicidal maniac, a mentally ill character being characterized by how pathetic they look, and a mentally ill character being shown as fragile through metaphors are all images that were originally seen in early horror films, when mental illness was less known, that have continued to recur in modern day films.
Works Cited
Ford, Dana. “Who Commits Mass Shootings?” CNN. Cable News Network, 24 July 2015. Web. 04 Nov. 2016.
Fruhwirth, Jesse. “Male Call: A Conversation About Masculinity and Violence with Byron Hurt and Jackson Katz.” Bitch 2014: 35-39. Print.
Goodwin, John. “The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part I).” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 50.3 (2014): 201-09. Wiley Online Library. Web. 4 Nov. 2016.
Hyler, Steven H. “Stigma Continues in Hollywood.” Psychiatric Times. UBM Medica, LLC., 01 June 2003. Web. 03 Nov. 2016.
“Self-injury (Cutting, Self-Harm or Self-Mutilation).” Mental Health America. Mental Health America, n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2016.
Stuart, Heather. “Violence and Mental Illness: An Overview.” World Psychiatry 2.2 (2003): 121–124. Print.
Tartakovsky, Margarita. “Media’s Damaging Depictions of Mental Illness.” Psych Central. Psych Central, 17 July 2016. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.
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