What Movies Get Wrong About Mental Health

Movies on mental health are now a lot more on our screen radars. From the recent Atrangi Re to many others, films are trying to address the issue instead of shying away from it. However media portrayal of mental health in movies has been a matter of reprove and flak.

Bollywood movies have been shaping a whole new different idea of mental health in the minds of the audience. A while back, Bollywood films used to link every mental illness or disorder to ‘madness’.

On one hand, some movies try to normalise the concept of mental health while others just represent it inappropriately. Sometimes these movies tend to introduce a character in the story just to add a fun element to it. Even the ones trying to de-stigmatise end up portraying it all wrong?

What Movies Got Wrong About Mental Health-

1. Atrangi Re

Atrangi Re showcases a character named Rinku who hallucinates and interacts with an imaginary person. This most definitely is a sign of schizophrenia. The movie ends up generalising different mental disorders and behavioral problems and puts everything under one umbrella.

The movie is also ingested with a lot of moments of humour. When the character of Rinku hallucinates and interacts with her imaginary boyfriend, instead of addressing the problem, the scenes are made comical. As if a strange-looking medicine can undo years of trauma.

Picture Credit: Filmfare

One of the most criticised scenes in the movie is of a to be a psychiatrist in a room full of ‘patients’ who explains to his colleague that each of the patients is having the same hallucination. “This theatre is filled with people who have OCD, Alzheimer’s, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia,” he says, suggesting that because of the existence of some mental disorder, all the patients are hallucinating the same visuals.

2. Anjaana-Anjaani

Anjaani Anjaani which was supposed to be a love story ends up in a place where it became a suicidal and depressive movie.  The two protagonists find themselves battling their fights and decide to commit suicide. Ranbir Kapoor is a disturbed Wall Street banker Akash and Priyanka Chopra is a heartbroken Kiara.

Two of them find each other on the bridge they went to commit suicide from. They take a pledge to “live to die” together and give up the idea of suicide.

The movie ends up romanticising the narrative where two depressed people who eventually fall in love live happily ever after. On one night they plan to jointly commit suicide which is a blatantly problematic representation of suicide romanticisation. The movie undermines genuine mental disorders and the seriousness of suicide is made a mockery of.

3. Hasee Toh Phasee

Hasee Toh Phasee shows a very comical character of Parineeti Chopra as Meeta who is a weird woman. She is portrayed as a woman with pretty unusual habits. The reason behind her odd behaviour was not defined in the movie. However, the solution to her undefined problem was shown to take pills.

The character of Parineeti Chopra is called “Mental Meeta” by the film’s promotional material.

The character is shown doing acts like frequent blinking of eyes, excessive jitteriness, nose twitching, and uncontrollable hunger. To control these sensations Meeta ends up taking pills which leads to weird cravings. The entire movie was wrapped without throwing light on what the disorder was.

4. Bhool Bhulaiyaa

Bhool Bhulaiyaa addressed Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

The character of Manjulika was shown as a ghost. The dramatic angle had so much influence that the mental disorder angle was overshadowed. The use of hypnosis is shown as a cure for DID. Other scenes show treatment rooted in superstitions. There was no effort made by the film to make the audience understand the disorder.

The character of Radha, played by Amisha Patel, is shown to be possessed by the spirit of Manjulika.

Psychiatrists acclaimed themselves as godmen in the movie. The film is full of insensitive jokes.

The character of Chota Pandit, played by Rajpal Yadav, is shown to have a psychological issue, that is solved with a slap from Akshay Kumar.

5. Tanu Weds Manu Returns

The film opens with a scene where both the characters of Kangana and Madhavan are taking marriage counselling. Their counselling session takes place in an asylum. The whole idea of marriage-related counselling in an asylum was problematic. One of the characters even ends up in the asylum for god knows what reasons.

Many Bollywood movies a lot of times either dramatise a mental issue or make a mockery of it. Improper knowledge about mental health disorders and behaviours leads to these problematic portrayals. For the portrayal of such issues which are of paramount importance, the mainstream media needs to be more sensitive and objective. Certain elements of psychological disorders are exploited and manipulated to serve their purposes. We should give it a thought before romanticising movies with such blatantly inappropriate mental health portrayals.

Views expressed are author's own

Suggested Reading: Must Watch Bollywood Movies That Put Spotlight On Mental Health