Demi Lovato Mental Illness

“Our society tends to shame or ignore those with mental illness, and I want to change that.” – Demi Lovato. For my final paper about the portrayal of disabilities in the media I chose to research and write about a person other than just one type of media – I chose to write about a person who I personally find inspirational. Growing up in a family of six I’ve always been the short and chubbiest of everyone. I’ve always struggled with weight and have been trying to constantly diet since I can remember. I remember my mom telling me to stop paying attention so much to my weight, but then having my sister or peers tell me that I’m fat or that I couldn’t wear that outfit because I just “didn’t have the body for it”. I hated my body, which led me

In the Health.usnews article they say how people with mental illnesses are often portrayed as a criminal or as a violent. People look at Demi Lovato and how she had punched her backstage dancer and think “wow, she has bipolar so she’s definitely crazy because she punched someone”. Another misconstrued fact about mental illnesses in the media is that PWD often look different than PWOD in television shows, etcetera. In an interview that Demi Lovato had done with Popcrush.com she even stated herself that she’s so sick and tired about how the bipolar disorder being displayed in a negative light all the time. In a quote from the PopCrush.com article she states that “Anytime you aren’t creating conversation about what mental health really is, you’re opening it up to a bunch of negativity.” Demi then goes on to say “It’s important to remember that the vast majority of people living with mental health conditions aren’t violent. They’re ten times more likely to be the victims of a violent crime.”.

If you think back to how whenever there was a “crazy” person they have some quirk about them that makes them different – because according to the media and most of society “people with disabilities cannot in any way just look like you and me, right?”. False. Something that I

Social construction is defined as the process of people continuously creating a shared reality through actions and interactions, which is experienced as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful. Because of social construction – some people are left outside of society because they might not fit into that “share reality”. We then looked at statements and how people for example may say, “Even though she uses a wheelchair, she is beautiful.” as though the wheelchair somehow affected her “beauty”. Demi Lovato is a perfect example of this – people are like, “Wow, I would’ve never guessed that she’d have a mental illness. She’s so pretty.” because we, as a society, have constructed this view that mental illness will make a person unable to be