Hollywood’s impact on Post-Soviet audiences’ understanding of mental illness
It was a late evening. I had been invited by a group of students to join them to go to a theatre to see the new Joker movie everybody’s been talking about. There were five of us — two international students like myself — a guy from Ukraine and a girl from Kazakhstan and two Canadian guys. We all went to the same college, so we had known one another for quite some time.
Everybody I knew was talking about that film. However, the things I’d hear were so distant from each other. The opinions were all really different, but one thing in common between them was their intensity. People had such strong views and opinions about the storyline, plot twist, characters and social issues raised in Joker, nobody who watched it was discussing it quietly or in a neutral manner.
So, the film enthusiast that I am, I decided to join the group acquaintances for the last screening of the day at around eleven o’clock. We went in really excited and shared our expectations, saying how happy we were to finally get to see it like the rest of our friends. When we were on our way out, our discussion was nowhere near being exciting and happy.
“I can’t believe there are people like that walking down the street, who can just lash out and murder somebody in a public place,” said the Ukrainian student.
“In our home countries, such people are kept under control in asylums,” said the student from Kazakhstan.
The thing is, I was the only quiet one in this dialogue. I was trying to process what I just watched, but the things the other two international students were saying didn’t leave my head.
“What do you mean “under control”? They’re not prisoners, they don’t need to be kept “under control”, they need to be taken care of!” said one of the Canadian guys.
The other one immediately agreed with him.
“And it’s not their fault, they have issues inside their head, they can’t control it. And because of the stigma, some refuse to get help. The system failed them,” he said.
The guy from Ukraine slightly nodded.
“I understand, but didn’t you watch what I just watched? They can simply do something crazy and put the rest of us in danger. Luka, don’t you think so?” he said.
I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t reply and say anything fair or factual. All I had were mixed feelings of confusion and disappointment. The disappointment came from knowing exactly why he wanted me to jump into their conversation and back him up. The mentality of Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Georgians is quite similar, like the rest of the people from the Post-Soviet and the CIS (the Commonwealth of Independent States) community. It got me thinking that even though everybody in the movie theatre watched the same thing, the way they’ll receive it and react to it is going to differ given their cultural and social background.
I was born in Georgia and raised in Russia. I witnessed two of the CIS cultures and their attitude towards mental health, which is very controversial and open to interpretation. I realized that our Torontonian friends weren’t as critical and shocked by the film because mental health is a widely discussed topic here in Canada. There are mental health workshops on our campus, massive billboards in the streets, dedicated to raising awareness about it. I haven’t seen anything like that back home. Neither have I heard it from my friends that are coming from other CIS countries.
As soon as I came home from that screening, I opened my laptop and started my research. This was the moment I realized I’m interested in psychology and psychotherapy.
I didn’t know exactly what mental health was, how many diseases there were, what was true and what wasn’t. I knew one thing — after watching films about it, we all create assumptions and jump to conclusions. Especially, if they fuel the knowledge we already have from our “cultural education”.
The first thing I discovered was that generally, there is no one most specific and universal definition of what it is. Yet when the phrase is used, it is usually meant to indicate a specific state of mental or emotional balance, a disturbance or lack thereof, which is usually referred to as a mental disorder. Such conditioning can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as worldview, culture, social institutions, family, work, as well as biological factors like genetics.
The next question I had was how many diseases are there and who classified them as mental diseases?
The World Health Organization developed the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The first version of such a document appeared in the early 19th century. Updated every ten years, ICD has reached its tenth revision nowadays. What’s important to point out is that not every single country in the world uses and relies on this international classification the way it is. For instance, there are nations that still follow the document’s ninth edition. The reason for that is quite simple and understandable. Mental health and issues related to it are very delicate and sensitive. They can take on different forms and evolve in different ways and are closely, sometimes directly, tied to the cultural code of one’s nation and its unique perception of those matters. Bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, dementia, autism and many other mental illnesses can be interpreted, understood and treated differently depending on where the patient, his doctors and professionals reside and are from.
So, my guess about the existence of a link between our background and understanding mental illness was right. I moved to my other point, which was whether or not films have the power to influence our thinking.
Similar to any social subject, mental health is extremely complicated and involves diverse fields of social work engaging in research and the process of educating the public about it. Among such fields is the media. Film and TV imagery can not just influence the way we perceive things, it can also create a vision that a viewer relies on, even if what he has watched was fiction. This is especially applicable to mental illness, as the lack or limited amount of encounters and experiences with mental illness in real life tends to result in acquiring knowledge from films.
It turns out, media images operate in our subconsciousness throughout our lifetime, even though we may be disagreeing with and denying the cinematic stereotypes. Especially Hollywood. It has a global platform in the world of entertainment media and has the ability to spread their imagery, interpretation of things worldwide. There are countless iconic cinematic pieces that contributed to our outlook on mental illness and people suffering from it. Among them: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Rain Man (1988), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Fight Club (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The Aviator (2004), Mozart and the Whale (2005), Black Swan (2010), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), Joker (2019) and many others throughout the decades.
Maria Borisova, a candidate of psychological sciences from Russia, believes films have a huge role in shaping our views on mental illness portrayals.
“I believe [the impact of films] is strong enough. Leastwise, the cinema, as a mass culture instrument, forms the image of a psychologist and a psychotherapist in the mass consciousness of people.”
A Russian actress Anna Bzhedugova, currently based in Los Angeles, thinks that movies are not just influential, but also a more frequently common way of being introduced to mental illness.
“Of course, movies can influence the way people see and understand things. And I think it’s one of the major outlets for people to see and understand things because if we compare, for example, the amount of people who will go and watch a movie versus the number of people who will go and just out of the blue, randomly, google autism or an eating disorder or just some information about a person with any kind of mental health issue, is going to be completely different,” says the actress.
Mental health is a challenging subject, and its understanding diversifies depending on the country. I remembered how my Ukrainian and Kazakh friends were on the same page when they were chatting about Joker. Also, the fact that one of them expected me to think in the same way, if not both.
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and other Post-Soviet nations are no exception. Hollywood films were always widely popular in those countries. There are millions of viewers and film enthusiasts from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. All of them are separate countries nowadays, but they’ve spent decades in the Soviet Union, having no borders between each other and sharing political and economic system.
After having spent 69 years under “one roof”, these nations co-developed traditions, customs, certain aspects of mentality, values and principles, upbringing and norms of social behaviour that altogether build a foundation for their common cultural code. This is why the perception of mental illness received and cultivated from Hollywood films usually overlap and are similar for people coming from those countries. There’s a handful of strong and vivid stereotypes and misconceptions planted in the minds of those audiences through cinematography.
I talked to multiple experts in the fields of sociology, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, film and TV industry that were coming from the CIS countries specifically, to get their perspective on our community’s audiences and their understanding of mental illness. I wanted to dig into our cultural consciousness and find the most common and frequent errors and myths that Hollywood creates or contributes to.
The Way Mentally Ill People Look
One of the most common creative tropes to use is the visualization of people who have mental disorders. Often portrayed by characters with messy and greasy hair, extremely small or large pupils, wearing dirty and ripped clothes, the general image created by Hollywood films suggests mentally sick people perpetually look sloppy and negligent. The viewer needs to keep in mind this is a creative approach — a visual tool of the cinematography. In real life, how someone looks should not be stereotyped as an indicator of their intellectual or emotional state.
A Ukrainian neurologist Larisa Khrystofor believes that such visual representation is only applicable to very intricate instances.
“Actually, it all depends on what kind of mental disorder, right? If a person is roughly depressed within bipolar, bipolar depression, then he’s all kinds of “under”, he’s apathetic, he doesn’t want hedonism, and a bunch of other “under’s”. He doesn’t care what he looks like, what he’s wearing, he may lose interest in life, he doesn’t want to eat, it may be true that he can put himself down and look like that. But that doesn’t mean that everyone with mental disorders looks the way they are portrayed. Such people may look like it in the movies, especially if they show if it was a person who was violent and was either, well, as barbaric methods used to be, undergoing lobotomy, ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy), and so on. They used typical antipsychotics, haloperidol, chlorpromazine, and then there were a lot of side effects — Parkinson’s, and whatever else you might think of, you know. Those people might look like that. Everybody else — no,” says Khrystofor.
Consequently, it’s not a constant for the patients to have a sure “giveaway” in their looks or appearances.
All of Them Are Violent And Dangerous
We often hear people being referred to as “crazy” and doing “mad” things in the news. This is also what happens in the films. The fear of the mentally ill due to them being a potential threat and danger to our society’s safety and well-being is a huge concern, especially for the viewers in the CIS. It cultivates fear, establishes and filters down the idea of such people being able to instantly lose controls and lash out, hurting and damaging everyone and everything in their way.
Khrystofor says that films can (and do) induce our way of thinking by triggering extreme cautiousness and anxiety when dealing with them.
“One can induce another, and if a person is potentially really mentally ill and after watching a series of movies like this with violence, aggression, with all that, he starts to induce in a sense of fear, an increase in anxiety, you know,” the expert says.
The neurologist believes that the pictures we see in movies stay in our minds and tempt us to rethink them and dig into them more.
“And he will come out of that movie with completely different feelings,” adds Khrystofor.
“And he will pick at it, he will remember it all, because 80 per cent of us are visual thinkers, he will constantly be remembering these pictures, pictures will pop up, anxiety and fear will build up, and his condition will be aggravated in this way. That’s what I mean by inducing”.
A psychiatry and psychotherapy doctor Lala Mammadova shared her experience of working with psychically ill people in Azerbaijan. She says that although violence is used as a plot device for characters with mental illness, such behaviour can occur in real life as well. However, it’s only accurate and applicable when talking about really difficult pathological patterns. People with such conditions are most often hospitalized and treated.
“Unfortunately, yes, there are some illnesses, where a person is a threat to society and even to themselves,” says Mammadova.
“…If a person is dangerous, at the moment they have an aggravation or psychosis, of course, when they are dangerous to society, their loved ones, or even themselves. Sometimes with schizophrenia under hallucinations, a person can commit suicide because voices tell them “kill” or “run away”. Then, yes, we hospitalize him without obtaining their consent.”
Mammadova pointed out an illness and a term, which are continually applied to destructive characters in cinematic storytelling.
“I’ve studied that the directors often touch on an illness called psychopathy. What is psychopathy, I repeat, it is a pathology of character. There are several criteria, but most of the times what the filmmakers show us, the people who kill, are aggressive, these are sociopaths,” says Mammadova.
The doctor elaborated on the challenging and difficult nature of such a condition, which usually portrayed as something very common for people with mental illness in movies. In films, the condition of sociopathy is shown as something that a person has to come to terms with and just live with it, like the famous London detective in BBC’s Sherlock (2010–2017). However, there are ways to deal with it and treat it.
“Sociopaths are people who pose a danger to society. They are manipulators, liars and will do anything for their gain. They have no remorse, also. They do not care about laws, people, about people’s feelings, and it is impossible to prove them wrong. Even in psychiatry, therapy for these patients is considered very difficult. It is, unfortunately, not even amenable to medication. Only psychotherapy, i.e. sessions, psychoanalysis helps, but not always,” Mammadova says.
In films, mentally ill people often get the representation of criminal-minded and threatful antagonists who create chaos and assault peaceful civilians. This is a major misconception. Hollywood storylines systematically suggest the direct and regular correlation between having depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and hurting others.
Khrystofor expressed her concern about the films’ general exaggeration and frequent use of people with mental disorders causing damage and pain.
“There’s a sort of demonizing taking place. They are shown to be cruel, unable to control themselves, equated with obsessive psychopaths, monsters, and so on. They’re associated with, not in all films, but in the majority of them, a constant source of danger for themselves, for others. And this mistake is a very harmful stereotype. This is a very negative message for the viewer,” says Khrostofor.
“Then, there is a negative attitude towards all these patients, although there is violence only if there is a paranoiac delirium, it is the N-th amount, not the most of the patients. Many patients with even schizophrenia are victims themselves. They do not kill anyone, do not rape, and many become victims themselves, you know. Same with autism and so on,” the neurologist says.
Mental Illnesses Are All Extreme And Give Special Abilities
There’s a variety of fictional characters who receive superpowers and draw unique gifts from their mental illness and disabilities. For example, Split (2016) is about Kevin Wendell Crumb, who has dissociative identity disorder (DID). With over 20 distinct personalities living within one body, each posing a danger, the man gets unique abilities through them. When one of the personalities called “The Beast” takes over, it gives the character physical enhancement and the skill of crawling up the walls. The movie caused mixed reviews and has been called out for misinterpretation of DID.
Oksana Arkhipova, a Russian clinical psychologist, says this number of personas in one person is very rare, even unlikely and unusual.
“Well, up to 20 [personalities], I don’t know… However, up to four is something one can encounter. Of course, 20y and 12 are too much, but it’s called a dissociative disorder, bifurcation is what we say in everyday life, but this is what we refer to as dissociative. That is when your personality leaves, and you have several personalities, four or five lives, and so on,” says the specialist.
The clinical psychologist says hyperbolizing DID and other mental states is a method directors use to show them in a more clear, obvious and comprehensible way for the viewer.
“It’s just that when you show a smoothed picture in movies, you won’t understand it much. You see the same schizophrenia in its bright stage, in its extreme manifestations you see this symptomatology,” says Arkhipova.
“When people are on the right treatment, they’re like us. The stage of remission isn’t interesting to anybody because you’re normal. That’s why the director’s task here is to show some extremes, exacerbations, vivid symptoms for understanding the disease. And how else would you get it?”
Circling back to special abilities, there’s a whole lot of films about genius and talented people, who have mental disorders of some kind. There’s a famous biographical drama A Beautiful Mind (2001), which follows a brilliant mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr., who has schizophrenia. And the Percy Jackson (2010–2013) franchise uses Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia as signals to children being demigods, implying that struggling to read is due to having brains used to Ancient Greek instead. There’s also BBC’s Sherlock (2010–2017), where the iconic fictional detective from Conan Doyle’s books is placed in modern London and happens to be a “high functioning sociopath”. This strength of his gives him a sharp style of thinking and control over his knowledge and emotions.
The CIS experts are debating whether mental disabilities and conditions can actually provide people with unique gifts and peculiarities or not. Some of them find it truthful to some extent.
Khrystofor described situations where having mental disadvantages can open possibilities to new intellectual advantages that aren’t inherent to an average person.
“The thing is, it really is. A lot of people start escaping into themselves and start drawing awesome. Many start to get really into music and write unusual pieces for their age, if we’re focusing on children, not adults. Some begin to learn languages, it’s simple for them, which a normal person couldn’t do so easily, just as he wouldn’t have been able to do without a mental disorder,” says Khrystofor.
“In fact, yes, in many areas such super-hyperbolized, “superpowers” appear, and it’s why in many people they go to a completely different level then. And a lot of people become great writers, like Hemingway, for example, or poets, painters. That’s really true.”
Another instance is Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Arkhipova elaborated on how people with autism have trouble communicating but can be good with numbers and technical disciplines.
“The one, I don’t know, Steve Jobs and so forth. The man had a mental disorder, too, right? Autistic, communication disorders, extrovert, problems with building relationships with people, but these people find themselves in IT technologies, for example, and in principle, yes, as a rule, such geniuses come out,” says the clinical psychologist.
“There are a lot of them that don’t require communication with people, then, in general, yes. Schizophrenics are great mathematicians, there is an element of that.”
Arkhipova highlighted the fact that just because the link between mental disorders and unique abilities does occur, it’s not a constant and is not universal.
“But that’s not everyone, again, not everyone. A stereotype develops, you watch Rain Man and you think everybody’s a genius mathematician now. But among the talented people, if we take them, they have very terrible mental disorders, mental illnesses. Artists, musicians, scientists. Scientists, maybe, yes, they get it… Physicists and mathematicians, often have it. I don’t remember the study, but among them, disorders of some kind are frequent,” adds the clinical psychologist.
The Image of the Professionals
Psychiatrists, therapists, nurses and other professionals involved in the field of mental health have very powerful and influential images in Hollywood movies. They can be portrayed as quite manipulative, making experiments on their patients and obsessed with mind control like in Shutter Island (2010). Or they can be shown as intense and aggressive like the head nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). They can also have the image of a professional and successful psychiatrist with a fancy office, who’s a former CIA operative like in Abduction (2011).
Even if we don’t take into consideration the film representations, the stereotypical picture of a psychiatrist is quite fearful in the mind of an average person from the CIS nations.
A Russian expert in philosophy, social sciences and education, Anna Kigay, gives a brief summary of what people with the CIS mentality think of, when they imagine a doctor in this area.
“You know, I’m afraid that when we touch on an image of a psychiatrist in our cultural code, we don’t get some nice man in a suit from a Hollywood movie,” Kigay says.
“Some kind of deeper image from history emerges instead. Psychiatrist is… I got a little shy to say, but, yeah, a “shrink” who just treats your mind like plasticine, manipulates, recognizes, and most importantly, manipulates data. So, you can’t trust him, it’s a person you can’t fundamentally trust because it’s some kind of hostile force”.
Even though there’s this unfriendly figure that comes to mind, this isn’t accurate or close to reality at all. The stigma of sly and manipulative specialists is just a stigma that many real-life professionals haven’t even encountered or heard.
According to Borisova, it’s unlikely for real licensed professionals in Russia to practise this kind of behaviour and attitude.
“Personally, I haven’t encountered something like that. To my mind, it’s unlikely in professional communities for a psychiatrist with an international certification to succumb to behaving like this,” says the psychologist.
“There can be charlatans, of course, who are realizing their personal goals and motivations, but they probably don’t have a certification.”
Hollywood movies feed our imagination and entertain us with notably intelligent mind games of psychiatrists, but in the real world, they’re doctors and their main goal and motive are to treat people and help them get better.
Psychiatric Hospitals And Facilities
One of the things we discussed with the students after walking out of the Joker screening was mental institutions. The way I pictured them was exactly the same as the students from Ukraine and Kazakhstan did. Our Canadian friends weren’t as frightened and creeped out by mental hospitals as we were.
This was another signal that the CIS perception of mental health is very different.
Who doesn’t remember the iconic DC Universe’s Arkham Asylum or the dictatorial and sadistic mental facility from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)? Or Martin Scorsese’s island-based institution in Shutter Island (2010)? The fear of mental hospitals has roots that go as deep as a couple of centuries back. In the 18th century, there were harsh and cruel treatments that were practised on people. Those methods were so remarkably barbaric and inhumane, that they even trickled down into fearful beliefs and assumptions of what awaits you in there today.
Kigay says people from the CIS countries have a strong, historically developed sense of distrust towards mental hospitals.
“In general, psychiatric care is not treated (considered) as care. And this, of course, relies on, as I’ve told you before, the experience of psychiatric coercive treatment within the framework of state terror,” Kigay says.
“This is terror, isn’t it, when people are intimidated and destroyed, threatened, isolated from their own lives? This is terror. And it did take place, that’s why the associations are exactly of this kind.”
The philosophy and social sciences expert also explained those associations and gave their description.
“Behind those walls, common sense, safety, openness are no more. Anything can happen to you there — you will get there as a normal person, but you will be drugged with haloperidol and come out a vegetable. That’s the fear. And I’m sorry, but it’s not coming out of the blue.”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is possibly one of the most recognized Hollywood films about mental institutions across the CIS. The disturbing images of cold-hearted and sadistic practices can leave a scarred perception of what these places are. Such portrayals create and fuel the nations’ already existing, historically formed fear.
Khrystofor opened up about her personal experience of being introduced to mental treatments in such facilities for the first time through film.
“After films like these [One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest], I, one could say, even started hating psychiatry at the time. This stigma indeed appeared for me. The films where psychiatry is showed so aggressively really can stigmatize people with mental health issues. And I had an overall stigma in regards to psychiatry after that movie,” shares the neurologist.
Mammadova noted her experience of working in an asylum in Azerbaijan is nothing like what an audience sees on the big screen.
“There are myths that in mental hospitals, I don’t know, we make patients into “vegetables”. That’s not true either. That in psychiatric hospitals everyone is violent, everyone attacks….” says Mammadova.
The doctor continued by sharing her own initial hesitation of working in such places, manifested by the famous stereotypical picture.
“To be honest, when the first day of my practice started, I was also afraid, because I also heard these stories, but after two or three days I got so used to it… 95 per cent of people who receive treatment there are quite calm, nice, people like us, though with some kind of illnesses. It happens, if a person has a stomach ulcer or a heart attack, we don’t make people social outcasts because of this illness, right?” says the psychiatrist-psychotherapist.
It needs to be clarified that the tyranny and disorder inside the mental institutions are conceived savagely and exaggerated solely for plot advancement purposes. A true to life institution isn’t a barbaric and aggressive clinic, where the patients are daily tortured and held hostage as prisoners. In fact, it’s where lives are put back on track and saved.
What this particular moviegoing experience taught me is how misrepresented and then misunderstood important issues can be through the art of cinema. However, what I remember clearly about that evening is my entire group of friends agreeing that there should be more true-to-life film stories about mental health.
Hollywood imagery is powerful. Fortunately, it can be put to good use. Mental illness-related movies manage to keep us aware of things and spread the word. For example, because of their existence and unquestionable popularity, we’re now more often reminded of the variety of symptoms, diseases and their names. Of course, the misinformation takes place, but the good side of things is that once shifted in the right direction, cinematography can actually educate and help those suffering from the stigma. Experts highlight several benefits the CIS viewers receive from watching Hollywood films about mental illness.
Arkhipova recognizes the massive cognitive factor of Hollywood films in particular.
“Well, the upside is that it’s a global psycho-education thing. Because in fact, they have such a global platform, they have an enlightening function,” says the clinical psychologist.
Arkhipova points out some movies display that people can be there for each other for support.
“I’m grateful that there is a list of films that can be used as instructional. The positive thing is that of course, they have taken on the function of educating the public. And several films demonstrate very well how to help people.”
Films that do justice to the patients are truly important. They create chain reactions of critical thinking and empathy.
“And another advantage of these films is that even us, if we don’t have any problems, at least to understand these people, to have compassion for them. You can’t judge these individuals because we don’t know what they’ve been through,” says Mammadova.
Hollywood can also make the process of seeking professional help start to be perceived as an ordinary, usual thing.
Borisova thinks introducing and implementing mental health care in stories contributes to the normalcy of it being a thing in our everyday life.
“It helps including this kind of help in the common lifestyle, without any fear or prejudice. To my mind, it’s crucial that people should be able to reach out and get timely and qualified help,” the psychologist says.
The contribution of film and media in intensifying and spreading damaging myths about mental health is real. Its outcomes are visible and can be traced not just across the CIS audiences but globally too. Now is the time to be reframing the film industry’s approach to representing the phenomena and those associated with it. Hollywood has the platform large and effective enough to harness its power and redefine how millions of people understand and think about mental illness. There’s a number of things filmmakers, screenwriters, producers and even actors can do to be fair and reduce misconceptions.
First and foremost, they can ask themselves — is it really necessary? Is it worth mentioning and “utilizing” mental diseases, is it really an impactful part of the story, or is it just another cliché plot creation tool? It is important to stop needless misuse and perversion. Stop abusing mental illness as a foundation for the antagonist to be evil and do immoral things. Perhaps, create more characters with mental disabilities and conditions, who are protagonists and exemplar in how they deal with their sickness. Avoid using generalizing and offensive terms in the scripts like “crazy”, “shrink”, “insane” and others. Show characters who display the possibility to live a stable and balanced life, even though they’re diagnosed with a mental disorder. Create more storylines, where patient characters actually recover, get better and move on.
Specialists particularly identify a common mistake that directors make — assuming how everything in this field works. What’s strongly recommended and genuinely appreciated by the professionals is when the director actually decides to immerse into their work environment.
Arkhipova says only by entering the institution, living and spending time with people there for a while, you’ll become able to correctly grasp how it’s running. After you absorb its atmosphere through your own eyes, your own experience, you’ll be capable of doing the facility and its caregivers and patients justice, once you’re creating a movie.
“…Because no matter what you read in the reports, look at their routine or attend their meetings, well, you just come, take a look and leave. And then there’s spending 12 to 14 hours of living their workday, blending in with them. Only then can you understand that atmosphere, feel it, and capture it. Anything else would be contrived, very subjective and superficial,” says Arkhipova.
The manner of sugarcoating addictions, symptoms and sick conditions remains the key problem that the film industry authorities and workers don’t see or purposefully choose to ignore.
Khrystofor says downgrading the negative tone in writing can actually lead to better results.
“The main thing, what I wanted to say, is for them to show it truthfully. Not by chasing the cash, not by embellishing the plot so much in terms of negativism and demonizing the addictions or these poor sick people. But by really showing these patients for what they are,” says Khrystofor.
Attracting more psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors from the field for consulting purposes. This could come in handy for fact-checking and accuracy.
Bzhedugova mentions the importance of research in screenwriting, which was constantly accentuated during her studies.
“When I had my screenwriting classes, a lot of my professors also always said, if you’re writing about something that actually happened in real life, not even necessarily mental health, but any kind of sensitive topic or someone’s story, you should always do as much research as you can,” Bzhedugova says.
There’s still a long way to go to achieve equal and honest portrayals of mental health in the film and TV industry. The conversation needs to be happening and hopefully, change is coming sooner than we think.
