I was recently discussing the new film Split with someone. (Split is an M. Night Shyamalan movie that just came out, and the main character is a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder, AKA Multiple Personality Disorder that kidnaps some young ladies. They have to try to escape the "bad guy" personality before he murders them. Apparently, one of his personalities doesn't even appear to be human anymore.) I mentioned that I didn't like it when movies like that made the villain a person with a mental health condition. (I haven't seen this movie for that reason, and also because I don't watch scary movies. I did do some research on it.) Right after the trailer for the movie came on TV, the person says in a matter of fact tone, "Well, it is proven that almost all serial killers have Multiple-Personality Disorder."
Just because we saw that movie trailer, that person was sure enough in their incorrect assumption to remark that serial killers had Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) because the person saw that the character had a bad guy alter/personality. That thinking right there is why I don't like it when horror movies, or any movies, really, make up a person with a mental health condition as a villain. (I'm not talking about movies that are based on true stories of someone with a mental health condition, just the made up, horror, thriller, or suspense movies with the main purpose of creeping out the audience.) Movies like that tend to get things wrong, and by making a person with a mental health condition the villain, such movies only add to the already stifling mental health stigma. Just so we're clear, people with DID are not likely to have a "psychopath"/ "sociopath"/murderer personality just because their personality has fragmented, possibly as a result of some kind of trauma.
I'm not sure what made that person arrive at that conclusion, but I don't doubt that the movie at least cemented or confirmed their idea. I will admit that I got irritated that this new movie may be giving people a negative idea of people with DID. I may have also gotten a little bothered by the fact that, just because they saw a movie about something, they somehow had arrived at the idea that it must be accurate to be in a movie. I attempted to educate them a tiny bit instead, in the hope that they wouldn't be going about life thinking that all people with DID could be serial killers or criminals or bad people.
I informed them that their statement wasn't, in fact, proven. I did point out that according to my psychology teachings and my therapist, that the people most likely to blatantly disregard rules and social mores, to view people as objects instead of human beings, and to lack a sense of empathy and/or guilt were those with Anti-Social Personality Disorder, which is nothing like DID. (Example: Think of someone who repeatedly steals just because they want something, and then that person doesn't feel any guilt or remorse for breaking the law. A serial killer with EXTREME Anti-Social Personality Disorder that comes to mind here is Charles Manson.) I am in no way saying that everyone with Anti-Social Personality Disorder is a serial killer like Charles Manson, I'm just stating that, generally, people with Anti-Social Personality Disorder tend to be the people that don't care if they break rules or sometimes laws to do/get whatever they want. People living with Dissociative Identity Disorder are not the same as people living with Anti-Social Personality Disorder, and living with either doesn't absolutely mean that a person is going to be violent.
I couldn't help but to think about people that have Dissociative Identity Disorder in real life after this movie. Imagine how they may have felt, knowing some murderous villain in a scary movie is supposed to have the very same condition that they live with everyday. (I wouldn't want someone to make a movie in which a person murders his whole family or somebody else because he has OCD, even though that idea would be EXTREMELY UNLIKELY and EXTREMELY FAR-FETCHED.)
Has this movie made people with Dissociated Identity Disorder feel bad or worse about their mental health condition? Are they now going to feel more concerned than before that people are going to treat them differently or even avoid them because of how DID was depicted in a movie? Is that movie going to make them feel ashamed of their condition because it blew it up and distorted it so much that the person was literally shown as a monster? Are people going to call them too sensitive for being bothered by the fact that their mental health condition was used in a movie to frighten people? How many times are people with DID going to have to have "the talk" with people when they say something like, "Oh, like in Split?"
These things could happen as a result of movies like Split, because, even though their sole purpose is just to creep out a theater full of people, movies like this also further the stigma surrounding mental health conditions (even when they make something up, like a monster-like alter/personality). The movie still used a very real mental health condition to create a monster that people should be scared of. The movie blew a very real mental health condition up into something fictitious, that isn't a real thing anymore, like it was okay to take real suffering and make something silly from it for entertainment.
I'll end with this: I know movies and shows like this are everywhere, and I know these movies or shows don't have the intention of adding to the stigma surrounding mental health. I know furthering the stigma is sort of an accidental by-product of the popularity of the movies or shows, but that still is no excuse for the people the mental health stigma harms. We should all think critically of the things the media shows us about mental illness instead of just taking everything in without question. If you want to know something about a mental health condition, don't rely on pop culture. Do some research through the National Institute of Mental Health or ask someone in the mental health field to help you. If you think people with mental health conditions are too sensitive to the things like movies such as Split, ask yourself, if this movie made a spectacle of something like cancer, AIDS, or something like autism or cerebral palsy, would I be just as okay with that as I was with a movie making a spectacle of a real mental health condition?
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