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13 Lies About Mental Illness and Therapy You've Been Told by Movies and Shows

"Good movie" doesn't usually mean "sound mental health advice."

13 Lies About Mental Illness and Therapy You've Been Told by Movies and Shows

August 28, 2021

Mental health is a serious business, which makes it specially unadvisable to learn about it from show business. As much as you like The Boondock Saints, you really shouldn't pop it into your DVD player as a substitute for therapy. I think we all agree on that – health is health, and entertainment is entertainment. Still, considering how big movies and TV are in everyone's life, it'd be nice if they tried a liiiitle bit harder when it comes to representing these matters. Otherwise, people can end up being misled about this weighty issue. For example, did you know that…

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Most psychopaths aren't murderers. About one out of 100 people show psychopathic traits - we'd be in big trouble if they were all Patrick Bateman. They can be impulsive, manipulative, and callous, but swinging axes is not a common thing they do. — Source: Insider

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Straitjackets aren't used anymore. Physical restraints in mental hospitals (a highly regulated and monitored issue in the U.S.) include wrists and ankle bracelets that attach to the bed, but not straitjackets. Those have been phased out a long time ago. — Source: Advocating for Better Mental Health

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Your personality won't split just because your life sucks. Dissociative identity disorder is understood to be caused by repetitive childhood trauma (such as abuse). Tyler Durden won't come along to keep you company because you feel alienated by a consumerist society. — Source: The Conversation

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Mentally ill people aren't likely to be dangerous. Most people with serious mental illnesses aren't prone to violence- and when they are, other factors are often at play, like substance abuse. If anything, having a mental illness makes you more likely to be a victim of violence. — Sources: American Psychological Association, Treatment Advocacy Center

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Schizophrenia and split personality are different things. Even though the word schizophrenia means split mind, it does not mean that your personality is divided. That is a different condition, named dissociative personality disorder. — Source: Penn State University

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Love will not cure your mental illness. Yes, having love in your life has a positive effect and helps you cope with your illness better - but it's still an illness, and needs to be treated. You can't just love it away any more than you can love away infectious mono. — Source: Vulture

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An injury won't make you forget who you are. A profound loss of identity has other causes, such a neurosurgery or infection. A brain injury is way more likely to cause anterograde amnesia - the inability to form new memories. — Source: National Center for Biotechnology Information

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Electroshock doesn't zap you while you're awake. Electroconvulsive therapy passes small electric currents through your brain after giving you general anesthesia and muscle relaxants. This has been the case since the 1950s-1960s — Sources: Mayo Clinic, National Center for Biotechnology Information

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OCD

Obsessive-compulsive disorder isn't about being a neat freak. You can get fixated on order and cleanliness, but also on other things, like not harming people or even counting things. Whatever the case, OCD isn't a personality quirk -- it's a condition that causes a great deal of suffering and can stop you from living your life. — Source: Chicago Health

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Psychosis

Psychopaths aren't delusional. Psychopaths don't think they're someone else, hear voices telling them to kill, or are disconnected from reality in any way. Hallucinations and loss of touch with reality are psychosis, not psychopathy. — Source: Insider

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PTSD

Not just war veterans get PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder, as its name tells you, is caused by trauma - and war isn't the only traumatic thing you can live through. PTSD can also be caused by a natural disaster or a car accident, among other things. — Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Most people with Tourette's syndrome don't curse. Well, maybe they do, but just like everyone else, not because of the Tourette's. The syndrome is characterized by tics, such as blinking, twitching, or clearing your throat. Only about 10% show coprolalia (saying inappropriate stuff without meaning to). — More: 6 BS Psychology ‘Facts’ (You Believe Because Of Movies)

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The Rorschach test is not a reliable diagnostic tool. The test's validity has been severely questioned since the 1960s. Also, it requires that the patient knows nothing about the inkblots - good luck with that when anyone can look up anything on the internet. — More: 5 Psychology 'Facts' You Believe (That Are Myths)

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