Psych Hour with Jo(sephine)!

Hey, y’all! Your favorite Florida-NOLA girl back to nerd out about psychology in the context of cinema. 

Today, we have a less technical topic. Something more personal. Something rawer. Something that might be controversial. I'm talking about mental health as it is portrayed in film. 

It is tricky to critique how directors and writers chose to show mental health in their stories. In real life, illness does not present consistently between different people. Some people may experience the same things, but that doesn't mean someone else having a different experience is no less valid. 

So, take my opinions as just that: opinions. 

The things I will say in today's blog do not come as fact or absolutes, but they are topics I am passionate about. It may not come as a surprise, but I have struggled with my share of mental health trouble. 

Middle school was where it started for me. The first time I tried to hurt myself in a permanent way, I was twelve. I didn't really know exactly what I was doing. I just knew I wanted whatever I was feeling to be over with. Of course, it got worse from there. There were more attempts to permanently hurt myself, and many more acts to temporarily hurt myself. Through all of that, I didn't seek help or talk to anyone about it, which was my biggest mistake. I was lucky in that I did get better, but to my readers who still struggle.... please reach out to someone.

There's more strength in someone who asks for help than someone who suffers in silence.

Now, I'll stop being a drag and get onto the real meat of this post, starting with my personal Moby Dick…

Thirteen Reasons Why. 

Pictured: Dylan Minnette (left) as Clay Jensen and Katherine Langford (right) as Hannah Baker (Thirteen Reasons Why, Season 1, 2017)

Now, look, I love Selena Gomez, but I will never understand why she and the rest of the team behind this show thought it was a good idea. In theory, yes, a show about teen mental health is an excellent idea, but they executed it horribly. To be fair to them, the book, which I had read years before the show came out, was horrid too, but they made it worse. And I'll tell you why I think so.

I am exclusively speaking about the first season because I refused to watch anything else from it as they came out with more, and I won't go over EVERYTHING because this isn't a show review. Trigger warning, I am about to talk about the big ‘s’ word, so if you don't want to read about that, stop here and I'll see you another day. 

First things first, I do not think this is a healthy, fair, depiction of a suicidal person.

As someone who has been there several times, and who has known many and read many accounts of people who also fell into such darkness, there isn't a pure simple list of reasons why someone wants to kill themself. The hardest part about getting better from mental illness is that it isn't as simple as identifying why you are feeling a certain way and stopping it. Most of the time, the pain comes from no identifiable source. Sure, there are things that can make it worse, but it isn't realistic to say, “This is exactly why I am depressed and want to kill myself.”

The fact that she made the tapes was the second issue.

I'm sure there are plenty of vindictive people out there, but usually when someone wants to kill themself, they are not doing it as an act of revenge or to hurt someone else. It's about stopping their own pain. About not wanting to feel the way you do anymore. It's not about getting back at someone, which is what the show portrayed. The story implies that Hannah is blaming the people she is sending these tapes to for what she did to herself. She wants them to feel guilty. She wants them to hurt for her; to inherit her pain. In my opinion, this depiction doesn't help the stigma around suicidal ideation. 

The third thing that I want to discuss is the actual act.

I don't want to talk about details here, but I'll share my opinion on why this scene was such a problem, and my opinion isn't solitary here. The truth is, the scene was unnecessary. The outcome was unnecessary too. You have to understand that Hannah wasn't supposed to actually die to know how much the show fucked it up. 

In the book—giving no praise because it's a problem too—Hannah takes pills. She is unconscious for the entirety of the story, but she wakes up in the end. She doesn't die. But the TV show decided she should. The TV show decided she needed a graphic death, and that they needed to show every detail. 

One of the most common criticisms I see of this show is that they provided a step-by-step guide on how to kill yourself using the method that Hannah did. The producers claimed that they consulted professional psychiatrists—which I do not fully believe they followed the advice if they had—and the word on the street is that they ignored the advice multiple people gave them to not put the scene in the show. The scene, I believe, has been removed from streaming since airing, but that doesn't lessen the impact they made. They still made the mistake. I don't see why they believed it was a good idea to portray the act like that or change the method to such a graphic one in the first place.

Lastly, I want to talk about the aftermath.

Not the seasons after the first, but the aftermath of Hannah's death. At the start of the show, she is already dead… but she doesn't feel dead. That's the problem for me. 

This show is for teens. It was supposed to show them that suicide isn't an option. It was supposed to show them how killing yourself impacts others… but they don't show that death is permanent. 

With Clay seeing Hannah everywhere, with everyone constantly talking about her, with her voice still being so present in the show and so many flashbacks to her before she did the act, the show isn't properly doing its job. It's showing teenagers who already may not get the permanency of death that you can still exist after you commit suicide. It's showing them that you still can see what happens after. It doesn't properly tell vulnerable, naïve minds about the reality of the act itself. And that is incredibly dangerous. 

Young people feel invincible as it is. Their decisions are impulsive. They base decisions off of emotion, not logic. Someone in a bad state of mind wouldn't get the message from the show that Hannah's actions were the problem. They would get the message that everyone else was the problem, that they caused her to do this and that she wasn't completely gone after. Mental illness isn't logical either, so combine that with a young mind… the show isn't healthy. It isn't smart. It didn't do what it sought to. The fact that, from what I heard, the next seasons are about topics like school shootings… it feels like the show is milking tragedy and pain for shock value to appeal to viewers. 

I don't want to leave off on such a negative note, though, so I want to talk about something I feel is healthier when portraying mental illness. 

It's a movie I can't say I know well, but it's one that comes to mind and it's one that I remember being a beautiful story: Little Miss Sunshine.

Pictured: (from left to right) Toni Collette as Sheryl Hoover, Paul Dano as Dwayne Hoover, Steve Carell as Frank Ginsburg, Abigail Breslin as Olive Hoover, Alan Arkin as Edwin Hoover and Greg Kinnear as Richard Hoover (Little Miss Sunshine 2006)

I need to rewatch this one. It's been too long since I've seen it. 

From what I can remember, the depiction of mental illness in this movie feels more real. It’s quiet and without concrete, definitive reasons. There are influencing factors, but the story never explicitly says, “This is why he wanted to kill himself.” It never blames anyone. It blames the emotions. It blames the illness itself.

Additionally, the movie gives hope to the viewer. It tells them that getting better is possible. It shows them how beautiful life can be. It reminds them that there are people who do care about you, even if you don't see them very often, and that they want to and will help you. It shows them what suicide can do without actually killing the character, which is more powerful than many realize. 

So… those are my opinions. 

I believe that if mental illness is to be used as a part of a story, it needs to be done responsibly. Directors, writers and producers need to analyze their potential audience and genuinely consider the risks that come with portraying things certain ways. It's a complex subject and it's not black and white. Most importantly…

If mental illness is to be used as a part of the story, there needs to be an additional message. Mental illness cannot be the only driver of the story. The audience needs to see that the illness itself cannot win.

It cannot be the final voice of the story.