TW: This story heavily discusses mental health issues such as anxiety and depression as well as suicide. Reader discretion is advised.
Mental health is a term thrown around that covers a wide area of problems and issues, issues that almost everyone deals with. Such issues deserve to be addressed and explored in the TV shows and movies we watch, but many that use mental health as a major plot point toe the line between some representation and egregious portrayals of people who struggle with anxiety and/or depression.
One of the most prominent examples of this is the musical, book and movie Dear Evan Hansen. Without spoiling, all three variations of this story center around a high school senior Evan Hansen who struggles with severe social anxiety. When he is confronted by a family of a boy at his school who committed suicide he gets himself involved in an intricate web of lies.
My main problem with Dear Evan Hansen is that Evan is a bad person. His actions are unforgivable and yet he is still (sort of) forgiven by some people. In addition, all of his actions are attributed to his anxiety. Yes, I believe it is important to show how anxiety manifests itself in this character and how it affects his actions and thought processes, but using that as an excuse or justification for his lies is unacceptable.
As a person who struggles with anxiety (although not nearly as severe as shown here), it’s harmful and, daresay gross, to have an example of a person with anxiety who does bad things seemingly as a result of their anxiety. Yes, I’ve made mistakes before and said things I shouldn’t have but I have never and will never blame it on my anxiety or depression, and having a widespread piece of media show anxiety like this creates harmful stereotypes and assumptions about anxiety that aren’t true or make people think it’s okay to attribute their missteps to anxiety.
It also makes conversations about mental health that much more difficult. People who struggle with anxiety and/or depression already feel like they should “just be happy” or “just calm down”, that they aren’t normal (speaking from experience). Stories like Dear Evan Hansen and the representation that it offers is continuing to make those struggling think like that and the stigma continues to spread. We should be able to have open conversations with people we trust about how we’re feeling and if we need help, but those conversations can’t happen if that isn’t happening in these stories that millions of people see.
Another thing that I think Dear Evan Hansen handles poorly is the use of suicide in the story. The death of Evan’s classmate is probably the biggest part of the whole story, but the ways in which they talk about it fall flat for me. In my opinion, they manipulate the audience to “connect” more with the story because of the action of suicide without ever having to flesh out or create developed characters in order to make that connection a different way.
Let me explain. I saw the musical Dear Evan Hansen when it came to Denver during a time in my life where our community had been touched by several deaths of students through suicide. I cried during the scenes where they talked about suicide (which is a lot), but not because of the story or the characters in the musical-it was because of what was happening outside of the theater. The same thing happened when I saw the movie adaptation this year-I wasn’t tearing up because of what was happening in the movie, it was because of my own experience with suicide.
I find this, again, gross. The writers and producers of this story shouldn’t have to rely on manipulation in order to make their audience have an emotional reaction to their story-the characters should be fleshed out enough or likeable enough that they feel sad for them.
Obviously many people are touched by suicide in their lives, whether it be more personally or in their community, but I think that by almost assuming that this is true, the problem is not being addressed. If the intention was to really bring awareness to suicide or just simply tell a story about how suicide affects different people, it should have been handled differently.
Another example of a piece of media that does this is 13 Reasons Why, which follows the suicide of student Hannah Baker and the impact she had on her classmates. This TV show is guilty of glamorizing mental health issues and suicide and also blaming Hannah Baker’s suicide on other people.
I first watched this show when I was in 7th grade and I definitely felt that it had a bad effect on my mental health. Since I was so young when I watched it and felt similar to the characters in the stories, I felt like it was okay to blame my issues on others, push it on to my friends or use it as an excuse for my actions-none of which where okay and a lot which I blame on how this show talked about suicide.
Mental health and teen suicide specifically is such a huge issue in the United States and our community, and pieces of media that are popular and so many people see have done so much harm to the audience that they are geared towards (impressionable teens).
I’m completely fine with TV shows and movies addressing these issues and I think that they should be addressed, but I would love to see more mental health experts being looped into the process to ensure that the representation is correct.