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Essay On The Wrongful Portrayal Of Mental Illness In Pop Culture

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The Wrongful Portrayal of Mental Illness in Pop Culture About 74 million people in the world have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) ; that’s 1.5% of the population. Research done by International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation shows that of 173 people who have DID only 3% were charged with an offense, less than 2% are fined, and 1% were put in jail. However, media wrongfully portrays people with DID as being violent, evil, criminals how always have the intention to harm others. This is false with majority cases with people who have DID, DID patients are proven to hurt themselves or think of hurting themselves rather than other people. Mental health has been viewed and imitated in inaccurate and damaging ways in television …show more content…

Most fictional serial killers that are shown in movies have some type of mental illness that contributes to them becoming a mass murder. In 2016 the movie Split came out and the main character, Kevin Wendell Crumb, has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and he has 23 alters (or 23 different personalities). One of his alters is a serial killer who kidnaps 3 girls and locks them in the Philadelphia zoo. The alters that does this is a nine year old boy named Hedwig. Hedwig is nicknamed “the beast” and has superhuman strength and animalistic actions, where he feeds on his victims before killing them. Two of his other alters, Dennis and Patrica, are being suppressed by the latter because they formerly use to harass young girls. AnnaLynne McCord, a famous actress who has DID, spoke out about how TV shows and movies wrongfully show DID. AnnaLynne voiced her opinion saying “The way this is talked about, there's just so much shame. And I am absolutely uninterested in shame. There is nothing about my journey that I invite shame into anymore,” (McCord 1:56) This misrepresentation of people with DID further deepens the unnecessary fear people have towards DID community. It encourages people with DID to think of themselves in a negative and shameful light when it’s a normal thing that many people go

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