Who can blame Christopher Titus, television’s latest emotionally tortured soul, for taking matters into his own hands and ordering his mother to “pack your explosives and get out”?
After all, she spent most of Titus’ childhood tucked away in a mental institution and, when at home, she looked for ways to murder him and his father. Butcher knives, arsenic, an ax.
Now, with Mom released and back home, Titus is the only family member not buying her recovery claims.
“I’m so sorry,” Titus’ girlfriend apologizes to the mother. “He just can’t seem to let go of your . . . felonies.”
So goes the message offered up by “Titus,” which is attracting 5 million viewers Monday nights on Fox. And while the situation comedy may be extreme for its genre, the show shares the same fundamental point of view television has had for years whenever it decides to comment on people suffering from mental illness.
Run away. Fast.
From “Titus” to “ER” to “The Practice” to “Frasier,” television suggests that people with mental illness are violent souls destined to commit murder and mayhem, or demented losers who end up homeless and living sad, lonely, pathetic lives.
When Peter Berg wanted to introduce a series built around the uncomfortable notion that we’re all prone to emotional and chemical disorders, he decided to set “Wonderland” within a ward that practices forensic psychiatry — the treatment of mental patients who have committed crimes.
The show, which was canceled earlier this year after a brief prime-time run, had the cooperation and advice of Dr. Robert Berger, director of Bellevue’s Forensic Psychiatry Service in New York. But mental-health professionals were ruthless in their criticism that, again, people with mental illnesses were written as violent criminals. Indeed, in the first episode, we learn that a patient who pierces the stomach of a pregnant doctor with a syringe had only hours earlier gunned down five people because voices told him to. There was also a Wall Street broker who tried to kill himself, and a young man who bit off his mother’s thumb.
And it’s not only that the mentally ill are presented as dangerous psychos who kill doctors, as one did this season by stabbing Lucy (Kellie Martin) on “ER.” Mental-health professionals contend that producers and writers have a tendency to depict people with mental illness as objects of ridicule, to use psychiatric terminology inaccurately, and to overuse slang and disrespectful terms for sufferers. It all contributes to a dangerous form of stigmatization, studies show.
“We continue to be appalled, saddened and disgusted by our results,” says George Gerbner, professor of telecommunications at Temple University and author of the Cultural Indicators Project Report, which was designed to measure TV’s diversity and cultural impact.
Founded 25 years ago and now commissioned by the Screen Actors Guild, the research, updated by Gerbner and released every few years (the latest in 1997), suggests, among other things, that the image of people with mental illness as psychotic killers and “evil people” has become deeply embedded in our popular culture.
The current study was based on analysis of 6,882 speaking parts appearing in hundreds of television programs encompassing three seasons of major network prime-time programming and network Saturday morning cartoons.
With 70 percent of the portrayals showing people with mental illness as violent and dangerous, mentally ill characters are far and away the most violent and victimized single group on TV. And since violence and retribution are shown as inherent in the illness, their “plights” are considered inescapable.
More than 50 percent of telephone respondents said they view TV characters with mental illness negatively, which makes sense, considering that more than 50 percent of people with mental illness are portrayed as drug and alcohol addicts, followed by criminals (47 percent) and lonesome people who’d rather live in the street (43 percent).
Mental-health advocates have long argued that TV’s portrayals of the mentally ill as criminals are disproportionate to reality, but finding accurate figures on the violence rate of the mentally ill is elusive; crime statistics rarely include the emotional state of perpetrators. (Some point to a 1998 report funded by the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation that found that ex-patients who don’t abuse drugs or alcohol are no more dangerous than anyone else.)
“I’ll admit that we don’t know as well as we should,” says Dr. Otto Wahl, a professor of psychology at Virginia’s George Mason University and the author of “Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness.” “But we do know that television influences people’s conceptions of reality, and we do know that those who believe in what they see can’t help but see the world as a more dangerous place.”
“Wonderland” may have invited loud protests, but the show’s content actually pales in comparison to many shows’ that came before it. For example, the 1996 series “Profit” was about a man so determined to climb the corporate ladder that he framed, blackmailed and killed people who got in his way.
Played by Adrian Pasdar, Jim Profit was emotionally unstable after being forced to spend the bulk of his childhood in a cardboard box. Scraps of food were tossed in, and a hole was cut in the side so he could watch television.
Viewers knew he was deranged because of his casual way of killing his colleagues, and when he ventured back to his expensive, split-level apartment, he’d curl up naked and sleep in a cardboard box. The series lasted only a season without much written about this mentally ill protagonist.
More recently were the much-talked-about opening moments of Stephen Bochco’s cop drama “Brooklyn South,” in which a man strolls a busy street picking off cops and others as though he’s walking through an arcade game. Once he’s caught, a cop yells, “We’ve got the crazy bastard.” As for “Titus,” the studio audience roared with laughter when the husband of the mentally ill woman came storming into the apartment asking, “Did you lock her in (the kitchen)? Take her shoelaces? Pat her down for weapons?”
“They’re used as scapegoats,” says Jean Arnold, a co-chairwoman of the New York-based National Stigma Clearinghouse, considered the hub of a nationwide information source on stigma. “The most damaging aspect of the stigma is the connection of mental illness with violence. And there’s a lot of research out there now that shows people with mental illness aren’t described as mentally ill as much as they’re (described as) simply evil.”
Besides images, there is language. Psychiatric terms such as “schizophrenic” and “psychotic” are routinely used incorrectly, according to mental-health experts, while offensive words such as “nuts,” “psycho” and “lunatic” crop up regularly in television shows and particularly commercials for products ranging from furniture (“We’re insane for having prices this low!” barks a recent one) to stereo equipment.
The producers of “Frasier” abandoned promotional material showing star Kelsey Grammer, who plays radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane, wrapped in a straitjacket, under the heading “television’s only certifiable success.” “Frasier” has long been criticized by the mental-health establishment, which says Frasier and brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce), also a psychiatrist, are “condescending” to patients, often using them as punch lines.
“Frasier” producers, like many network executives, declined to comment for this story.
“We don’t lack a sense of humor, contrary to popular belief,” says James Radack, a spokesman for the National Mental Health Association. “But sitcoms present more ridicule than humor. Nor is this a matter of being politically correct. It’s a matter of being sensitive to the fact that stigma pervades society just in everyday talk, and once you’re desensitized to it, it becomes an acceptable part of your own lexicon.
“This is why writers of these series use such damaging dialogue so freely and frequently. They’re not malicious; they really do think it’s OK because they hear everyone around them saying it. We challenge producers to think outside that box.”
“Just as terms like `a schizophrenic’ or `a diabetic’ identify individuals in terms of their illnesses as if the diseases were their only and most important characteristics, these broad references to the mentally ill convey a similar lack of appreciation of the basic human character of individuals with psychiatric disorders,” says Wahl, who has been studying the subject for nearly 20 years.
“This has been the problem, and unfortunately, there are so few roles that deviate from this that there’s no balance. This creates in the viewers’ minds that what they see of people with mental illness is indeed true. And why not, if that’s all they see?”
Berg agrees with Wahl but wonders if the mental-health community has become so thin-skinned that it is liable to reject TV projects that could, over time, do more good than harm.
