Mental Illness in Society

One way I checked to see how mental illness is depicted in society was to take a quick informal poll from my friends and family. Through Facebook I asked my friends and family, what are four-six words that come to mind when you think of mental illness. I took all the words they gave me and complied a list which I put into a word cloud generator to see which words were most frequent. The bigger the word the more often it appeared on the list.

As you can see through this word cloud that one of the most common words associated with mental illness for the people I asked was "homeless". That is a common misconception people. They have this mental image of a crazy person out on the streets who is homeless and delusional. This is not accurate. There are homeless people who are mentally ill but it is not everyone, not even a majority. Being homeless and being mentally ill are not mutually exclusive.



Along the same lines another way mental illness is seen in society is how people image people with different disorders. Most people have a stereotypical idea of what the mental illness looks like in someone. When you think of depression you think of someone laying in bed crying all day every day. When you think of an alcoholic you think of the drunk guy stumbling down the street but you might not think about the soccer mom who drinks 2 bottles of wine every night. Mental illness is depicted one way but manifest itself differently in everyone. The clip below is an example of this where people who have bipolar disorder discuss what they are not.





Sadly, mental illness in society is something that people feel they should be ashamed of. Many people never even realize how many people around them are suffering because those people will not open up for fear of being stigmatized. Mental illness has become a dirty word to some people and society would rather hide the problem than deal with it.




Mental illness has become a joke to some people in society. Shirts like this are made and people find it funny.

Another way mental illness is depicted in society is through media such as television and movies. The clips below show how some mental illnesses are being depicted.