You’ve just finished watching a slasher horror film. At the end, the antagonist of the film had a mental illness which drove them to murderous madness. The stigmatism that all mentally ill people are violent, look different from us, or that it is a “cute” personality trait can greatly affect how the general public views these people. Media representation on television and in movies is important, however, Hollywood needs to do a better job at representing mental illnesses correctly. Many people believe that mental illnesses cause someone to become a violent and uncontrollable person. This comes from the media’s portrail of them. In fact, the co-director of Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry, Cheryl K.…show more content… He stands out from others and you can immediately see that he is different by just looking at him. The idea that mentally ill people look different than someone without appears in other different types of media. Wild eyes, intense expressions, and unkempt clothes are all parts of appearance that media uses in order to identify these people with. However, a large majority of people with mental illnesses are around you and can still do normal things and look like any other “normal” person. You may argue that many homeless people are mentally ill and they have a neglected look to them. Since they have this look and a large majority of them have mental illnesses, most mentally ill would look like this, or so you’d think. Statistics have shown that one in four adults experience a diagnosable mental disorder within a year (Polatis). You could pass multiple people with a mental illness within a day and not even know it. Media’s representation of a mentally ill person’s appearance is incorrect and can cause confusion to people about what they may or may not look