by S.E. Ingraham

Created on: January 06, 2010   Last Updated: January 07, 2010

While television and the movies have made a concerted effort to dispel many of the myths and misinformation surrounding the mentally ill, if the story looks like it will make good copy, or, in the case of film -  earn untold millions of dollars; then, all bets are off. The portrayal of mental illness in all its various permutations is as lopsided as it ever was, and the stigma remains very much in place in much of the public’s consciousness.

And those examples, television and film, are, for the most part, fictional. One only has to view popular shows such as “Criminal Minds”, “Bones”, or the ubiquitous “Law and Order” to witness a multitude of criminality that is often perpetrated by people who are deemed mentally ill. Many of these shows borrow their story-lines directly from the news of the day, barely disguising the facts to fictionalize the tales for their viewing audience.

Hollywood still loves a movie about the troubled soul. Witness movies such as “Mr Brooks”, “Zodiac”, “Michael Clayton” and “The Hours” - all fairly recent films dealing with different aspects of mental illness; some of which resulted in criminal behaviour (as in the case of Kevin Costner's Mr.Brooks and the killer in “Zodiac”), others portraying vividly how it might be for a bipolar patient to experience a manic episode as in “Michael Clayton” -  at least, that's what the audience is led to believe as they watch the character played by Jim Broadbent start to unravel. In "The Hours" - the audience is afforded a glimpse of some profoundly depressed, suicidal women, and the lives they lead. One could be forgiven for wondering if Tinseltown might be making a real effort to present mental illness honestly, at least in some instances.

Then there's news media. Much like their unspoken motto, “if it bleeds, it leads”, another maxim also holds true; if the psychotic break is happening to someone famous enough, it will get a huge amount of coverage, and the coverage will be ongoing, ad nauseum. When did the public become so desperately interested in the breakdowns of young celebrities like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan? Or need endless details about the deaths and facts surrounding the same of people like Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger, to name but a few.

In the general public, if an average citizen snaps and does something truly

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