Posted at Variety. ByRob Owens June
13, 2013 http://variety.com/2013/tv/awards/tv-creators-tackle-mental-health-1200496412/ Reposted at http://www.darkestcloset.blogspot.com,
Specificity can be key to portraying serious issues in skeins
Although debates about gun control gained more traction in the wake of shootings at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in December, the issue of mental illness also re-entered the public conversation. In primetime, mental illness has been in the mix of social issues showrunners address head-on in serious dramas.
“There are still shows that focus
simplistically on making ‘crazy’ people violent or comedic,” says Dr. Carole
Lieberman, a media psychiatrist who’s also been a consultant on TV shows,
including daytime soaps “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the
Beautiful.” “Other shows make the effort to go beyond the stereotypes and
create characters with specific mental illnesses.”
Lieberman says
symptoms don’t appear out of nowhere, and TV shows that explain how they
developed — in childhood trauma or through specific adult experiences — paint a
more realistic picture.
Former “Homeland”
writer Meredith Stiehm says she read popular and medical literature about
bipolar disorder, an aspect of the show’s Carrie character (Claire Danes). Stiehm
also attended a symposium at Princeton and spoke with Kay Jamison, a Johns
Hopkins professor and leading expert on bipolar disorder.
“I feel a lot of
responsibility about it,” says Stiehm, who co-wrote “The Vest,” a first-season
segment in which Carrie experiences a manic episode. “I ended up doing the
research, and I’m pretty interested in it. I know a lot about it — I have it in
my family so by default, I became the de facto expert on Carrie’s bipolar
disorder.”
Psychiatrist Dr. Eric
Hollander of New York’s Montefiore Medical Center praises Homeland for mostly
getting its depiction of bipolar right.
“Claire Danes did a
terrific job in terms of depicting what it’s like for someone with bipolar
disorder in a pretty realistic fashion,” says Hollander, “and showed a pretty
broad range of symptoms, from mild hypermania to full psychosis.”
His only criticism was
the way the show portrayed electroconvulsive therapy at the end of season one.
“When people have ECT,
they’re given a muscle relaxant, so essentially they’re asleep,” he says, “and
the only way you can see somebody having an induced convulsive seizure is small
movements in their fingers or toes. They wouldn’t appear to be having a full
seizure, but I can understand why they did that to dramatize that she was
having ECT.”
Hollander also praised
NBC’s “Parenthood” for its depiction of an adolescent with autism spectrum
disorder, as seen in the character of Max Braverman (Max Burkholder).
Parenthood exec producer Jason Katims says he was inspired to include a
character with autism because of his own experience with his 16-year-old son,
Sawyer, who is on the autism spectrum.
“I didn’t have any
kind of noble reasons behind (including the character),” Katims says. “I did it
because when I was coming up with the pilot episode of ‘Parenthood,’ I was
trying to explore things I felt were relevant today.”
Katims adds that he’s
happy more TV shows now identify characters with autism, rather than just
present the characteristics of autism without naming the disorder.
“Television in general is getting much more sophisticated,” he says. “It not only allows for you to be more accurate when exploring issues of mental illness, it demands it.”
Carlton Cuse and Kerry
Ehrin, exec producers of A&E’s “Psycho” prequel “Bates Motel,”
independently asked doctors about the Norman Bates character and what Norman
could be suffering from, and both heard the same condition: dissociative
identity disorder. The show has yet to diagnose Norman with that degree of
specificity — a recent episode featured school authorities expressing concern
about Norman’s “emotional instability” — but it could happen “maybe way
downstream,” Cuse says.
“It would have to come
from a doctor,” he notes, “and it’s so much the story of people who aren’t
dealing with doctors, so I don’t know if it would happen. But the way we’re
writing it is dissociative identity disorder.”
To balance an accurate
portrayal with dramatic license, “Bates Motel” producers break their stories
first and then consult with a medical authority.
“If we were doing ‘ER’
or ‘Chicago Hope,’ we would need to be held to some standard of medical
veracity,” Cuse says. “This is a fictional show, and I think we’ve given
ourselves an enormous amount of license to make the story play. Norman Bates is
based on a character in a movie that was taken from a book that was based on a
previously existing serial killer, so we’re now four steps removed from that.
Right now our concern is about making Norman Bates a compelling character.
That’s far more important to us than telling a medical story.”
“That being said,”
Ehrin adds, “we do try to have some semblance of reality for the symptoms of
the disorder and how it works. It’s not like we’re just making up stuff.”
