There’s a conspicuous lack of mental illness in the media. I say ‘conspicuous’ because when you look at the statistics, you’ll find that about 1 in 4 Americans have one. Probability says that if you don’t have a mental illness yourself than you at least know someone who does.
You wouldn’t guess that from looking at TV and movies. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of mental illness if it’s a serial killer crime show or something set in an asylum. You’ll hear oodles about mental illness being prescribed to so-and-so killer at the umpteenth massacre at such and such part of the country. Maybe what I should say is that there is a conspicuous lack of positive portrayals of people with mental illness. There are maniacs and sadistic freaks a plenty, but rarely an average or heroic person who just happens to be dealing with a neurological disorder. Every now and then a movie like Silver Linings Playbook will come around, but all things considered those movies are rare.
That doesn’t mean that these characters don’t exist; they just aren’t stated as having that disorder. Popular culture is littered with characters who would probably, if not definitely, be diagnosed with a mental disorder or neurological issue in real life. This list contains six characters from different mediums, whose behaviors indicate that they either have a mental illness like depression or a neurological disorder like autism. There’s no particular order to this list, though generally the characters lower ranked tend to have less evidence to support my armchair diagnosis, while the ones ranked from three to one tend to have more evidence.
judeclee 