This Week in Mental Health... Halloween Edition

It's time for my weekly round-up of mental health stories again! This post is a special 'This Week in Mental Health...' full of Halloween related stories. Don't get me wrong; I love Halloween. I love vampires, and scariness, and pumpkins - but when it comes to mental health, Halloween often messes up. Unfortunately, Halloween and it's focus on terror and horror brings with it a lot of stigma around mental illness. 

I mean take a look at this film Netflix added just last week:

The description; "What goes on in this asylum could drive people crazy." The so-called 'crazy' people take over an asylum and lock the medical staff up, only to enact the same horrific treatments on them. The mentally ill are homicidal, torturers, assaulters. Madness in horror, rarely depicts the reality of mental illness. ECT is a favourite trope of movie depictions of mental illness. Despite there being many arguments in favour of the treatment, it is shown as a barbaric torture inflicted against the patient's will in Stonehearst Asylum. I didn't watch past this point. I know only too well that mental illness has become fair game when it comes to getting your terror kicks. 

But the use of asylums and the mentally ill when it comes to the horror genre, or just Halloween in general, has proven itself widely popular. Heck, I keep watching the films because they do exactly what is written on the tin; they terrify me. You see had I been alive 50 years or even longer ago, I probably would have ended up in one. And that, more than the practices or the patients terrifies me. 

Is there a balance between realistically depicting mental health and recognising that asylums were places that struck fear into everyday people's lives? Is it ever okay to host a horrors of the asylum event? Or to dress up as a mentally ill escapee?

Here's how mental health and Halloween have been making headlines this week;

1) Halloween event advertises ‘asylum’ attraction ‘filled with the crazy’, Catherine Healy

Is the horror trope of ‘asylums’ furthering stigma around mental health? It’s something I definitely struggled with when watching American Horror Story’s second season Asylum. I mean, on the one hand it’s one of the best seasons of television made in recent years (if you like gore of course), on the other, it reinforces the stereotype of eery industrial buildings, inhumane practices to treat mental illness, and it’s very harsh portrayal of the mentally ill background characters at least (main characters had their ‘illness’ often explained through demonic possession, alien abduction, faked etc.) But as many of the comments below this article suggest, maybe our distaste for asylums is just PC gone mad?

The Journal, 27^th October 2015;

“Organisers of Haunted Spooktacular in Kells said they did not intend to cause any offence by including the attraction in its programme of activities. The event’s website invites visitors to “journey into the asylum” and “survive the nightmare, filled with the dangerous and unique features from this abandoned hospital used to attack victims from every angle, testing your nerve, guts, and instincts”... 

In a statement, the CEO of Mental Health Ireland, Orla Barry, said she hoped the “asylum” attraction was not intended to portray people with mental health difficulties in a negative way.“Many vulnerable people suffered in Ireland’s asylums in the not too distant past,” she said.”

2) Why Everyone Is So Upset About This 'Modern Family' Episode, Molly Shea

(Photo: National Alliance on Mental Illness) 

Not even TV is immune from sitgmatising mental illness during Halloween festivities. And everyone’s favourite family are definitely no exception. The Dunphy's opinions on mental health however aren’t so modern.

Yahoo, 28th October 2015;
“Modern Family is known for “going there”: gay marriage, relationship age gaps, dysfunctional families, little is off-limits on this sitcom, and the characters manage to find the laughs in all of it. Which is why it was a little jarring when the Emmy-winning show aired a Halloween episode, “AwesomeLand,” in 2014 that featured an “insane asylum” chock full of the stereotypical characters — deranged patients, sadistic nurses, references to the “cuckoo farm,” and more. 

Hilarious, right? Not for those who’ve been hospitalized for mental illness, or struggle with any of the mental health issues that one in five Americans face each year. There’s such a strong stigma around mental illness that makes it difficult to reach out for help, so it’s disturbing that a show that takes such pains to crush stereotypes would air such an off-color episode. Even worse, the episode continues to air in the lead-up to this year’s Halloween.”

3) We have embraced America's cry-baby culture over offensive halloween costumes, Grace Dent

Besides examining why Dent believes any one of the patients in her local mental health unit would have any interest in her whatsoever, except perhaps after reading this highly offensive article, maybe it’s worth examining how far the PC brigade has gone? Is wearing a Cecil the Lion costume as offensive as dressing as an escaped mental hospital patient? Are we right to be offended by any of them? I’m too busy being offended by Dent’s attitude to answer those questions right now.

The Independent, 26th October 2015;

“Yet, in embracing America’s passion for Halloween – the parties, the dressing up, the supermarket spin-offs, the glorious commodification – we have also embraced its cry-baby culture over offensive and problematic costumes. One of my darkest fears, for example, is being murdered, raped or kidnapped by one of the 211 (and still counting) dangerous patients which my nearby mental health unit, the John Howard Centre in Homerton, has allowed to escape since 2001. Now that’s terrifying. But I certainly will not be attending any private Halloween house-party wearing a white doctor’s coat with ketchup down the arm pretending to be a cunning escapee, because I understand now this might prove unbelievably offensive to anyone who might see me in it. It would also be equally offensive to people who didn’t see me but heard about it later on Facebook. In fact, I should have probably added a Halloween trigger warning to this paragraph...”

4) This Woman Had A Powerful Response To The “Anna Rexia” Halloween Costume, Ryan Broderick

Why oh why do companies continue to produce offensive and completely despicable costumes annually? Because there remains a stigma around mental health, those with mental illness are classified as the scary ‘other’ and the companies get increased traffic to their website from the angry ‘crazies’. Jessi Davin wrote a blog post on the subject of the Anna Rexia costume two years ago, and Buzzfeed have caught up with her just in time for Halloween. In case anyone was thinking of dressing as either a mental illness, or the ‘mentally insane’, think again...

Buzzfeed, 27th October;
“Ever since 2011, this “Anna Rexia” costume has made the rounds online every Halloween. It inspired Jessi Davin, a 26-year-old woman from Florida, to pen a powerful blog post about her own experiences with anorexia. Davin was diagnosed with the disease at 19 and was in treatment until she was 22...

 “Want to dress as ‘Anna Rexia’?” the post concludes. “Just go as a vampire, or a zombie. Because 1/3 of us are dead.” In the two years since Davin first shared her story, her post has been shared thousands of times across different social networks.”

5) 'Mental patient’ Halloween costumes: a scientific guide to dressing accurately, Dean Burnett

You know when you read an article that you so totally agree with that you starts yelling ‘Yes, Yes, Yes’ internally? That’s what this article is. Burnett proposes an alternative – a guide for how to really dress like you have a mental illness. For depression he says just wear your normal clothes, but take several hours to put them on due to a chronic low mood and almost complete lack of motivation. And again I’m internally yelling...

The Guardian, 21st October 2015;
“Maybe you’re wondering what all the fuss is about? Halloween is supposed to be about scary things (or sexy things these days, for some reason). Yes, some bedraggled individual running at you with a blood-stained cleaver is scary, but that’s because they’re clearly a murderer. You should be scared of murderers, regardless of their mental health situation. Despite what opponents of gun control might like to imply, those with mental health issues are highly unlikely to harm anyone. And yes, the mainstream portrayal of asylums is a scary one, but asylums were mostly scary places for the inmates, not because of them, given the sort of things done to them there. So, if you will insist on dressing like someone with a serious mental illness for Halloween, here’s how to do it accurately...”

So what have we learned from articles around the world this week?
A) As much strides as we think we are making to eradicate the stigma around mental illness, Halloween seems to bring it all back either through inappropriate costumes, parties, and tv/film depictions of asylums and the mentally ill.
B) But there's a growing awareness of being politically correct that ,although it can be classed as 'PC gone mad' and being easily offended, is trying to curb the fine line between stigma enforcing and slightly offensive.

But to be honest we probably haven't learned anything. Because year on year we have the same discussions and journalists write the same articles come Halloween.
Perhaps what is needed is more discussion of mental illness throughout the rest of the year so as to increase awareness and understanding of the realities of living with mental illness. Because nothing is more scary than the unknown.