#i say this because some creators assign mental disorders to their characters without really knowing much about them

[animemental]

My first anime love: INUYASHA PT2

Here we go! Now, for clarification purpose: this is for fun and psychoeducation. The only part you should take seriously are the mental health facts, which will be clearly labeled. Everything else is silly stuff and ramblings. I would even say that most of the time, people won’t agree with my observations or thoughts on the shows or characters. My advice: scroll past if you don’t like it. 

This post will be about the characters Inuyasha and Kagome. Remember, I am not doing this for people to self-diagnose or diagnose others. Not every anime creators and manga artist is thinking about mental health when they create characters and assigning them disorders. So, my observations are pretty surface level unless there is something obviously trying to be portrayed within the plot or character development. Without further ado, let’s dive in!

When I think of Inuyasha, first thought is his awesome fighting prowess and blunt personality. I appreciate his aggressiveness because it fits the circumstance and his personality pretty well. However, you can also see that he can be sensitive and a big softie when he cares about you. When I thought about HIS impulse control, my immediate thoughts go exactly to that: the aggression. He is ready to fight at the tip of a hat, some times requiring his friends to hold him back. In the beginning, it felt like he did this often; always on the defensive, zero perspective-taking skills and hypervigilance. Understandable considering he had just woken up from being stuck to a tree AND not realizing the world had changed since he last opened his eyes. Also, just the whole world they are in requires some level of hypervigilance just to stay alive. Demons running amok and all. 

Now, psychoeducation time: Impulses are the sudden strong and unreflective urge or desire to act. Impulse-control issues fall into the category: Disruptive, Impulse-control and Conduct Disorders, harboring disorders such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, etc. They are determined by assessing age, developmental history, neurological alternatives and behavioral symptoms. Inuyasha does not fall under a specific one necessarily, but it does seem that he is pretty impulsive person and learns to think before acting in more situations as he gains friends along the series. To be fair, I am also not taking into account his childhood because there isn’t enough to compile evidence that he had low impulse control beyond the normal development of the brain.

I also think he struggles with verbal impulse control. Throughout the series, he says what is on his mind and hardly has a care for the harshness of his words. Albeit, most of them are actually helpful, encouraging or insightful statements said in a certain tone or in a way that make you have to think about the underlying meaning. This is not a bad thing, as I know several amazing people who have been called blunt, critical, harsh, etc. This comes from experience and learning to how respond to people as you develop, as well as environment and social interactions. Impulses are a really thing aspect of the human brain. It takes 20 seconds for an impulse to dissipate. Meaning, if you can hold out on that impulse for 20 seconds, after that it becomes easier not to act on it. I tell my clients to count to 20 in their head or out loud and then re-think about the impulse to see if they still want to do it. Or, to focus on something else entirely and most of the time, the impulse passed. It works great with kids and teens who are willing to try it. 

Last thing: impulses can be focused on many different things, so differentiating normal impulse control to abnormal patterns of low impulse control that is impairing daily functioning requires thorough assessment by a professional. 

Tune in to read about my thoughts on Inuyasha struggling with grief and what I think about Kagome in the next post!

[cnrothtrek]

On “Jessica Jones,” mental healthcare in the US, and representing mental health issues in media

First, a note: Although this post was inspired by listening to the recent Jedi Counsel podcast discussing season two of “Jessica Jones” from a psychological perspective, this is really just a personal reflection on the responses I have seen from various mental health professionals who have written articles/blogs, recorded podcasts or YouTube videos, or otherwise made publicly-accessible responses to recent popular media depictions of mental health issues. This post will specifically mention two Netflix series, “Jessica Jones” and “13 Reasons Why,” but my reflections have also developed out of some more general impressions of how professionals sometimes respond to fictional depictions of mental health issues.

For the record, I love the Jedi Counsel podcast. I come at this post from different perspective, but I do find them to do an overall good job of giving thoughtful opinions that add a lot to discourse on mental health in the media. And I think they did a really good job educating/discussing the concepts and techniques seen in season two of “Jessica Jones” from a psychological perspective. If that is a topic of interest to you, I highly recommend listening to their podcast. Visit the Jedi Counsel website here.

Warning: This post contains minor spoilers for “Jessica Jones” season two and “13 Reasons Why” season one. It also discusses portrayals within these series of issues such as PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and violence against women.

Okay, onto the actual post (below the cut).

I’m an MSW student, and I recently wrapped up my foundation field assignment in which I did a fair amount of work within dual diagnosis peer support groups and programs. Because of that experience, I assumed right away that Jessica’s anger management group was a peer-led group, and I knew that it would look different from how a licensed therapy group would work (which was acknowledged in the podcast). I have struggled, personally and professionally, with the pros and cons and ethical implications of peer support programs vs science-based therapy, and I, too, was frustrated by this anger management group in the show. However, my frustration isn’t with the show, but with the way mental health is understood and addressed by the justice system in the US.

I know that positive depictions of mental health treatment are very lacking in media, and that does frustrate me. Even so, I cannot deny that what “Jessica Jones” has represented is being done in the real world. Peer-support groups are commonly utilized by judges because they’re free and readily available in most areas. Now, don’t misunderstand me here, because I have seen peer support be an incredibly powerful force for good in the lives of people when applied thoughtfully and in conjunction with other forms of treatment. But, on its own, I’m not convinced that it is enough.

Unfortunately for many Americans (especially those who are socially and/or economically disadvantaged), peer support is all they get.

I found it incredibly interesting that the show chose to make the facilitator a man who had formerly been abusive towards his wife. Now, I’m glad they didn’t portray the facilitator as someone who seemed predatory or still acting out violently, because they could have easily villainized and dehumanized him due to his history. And again, not all peer support groups are like this. But, I have heard and read many stories of peer support groups failing to protect and support vulnerable people who attend— particularly women. In fact, there are organizations that have created women-only peer support groups for this very reason, because a lot of women have reported being harassed and assaulted by men they met in peer support groups.

So the story is that Jessica, a woman with a history of abuse from a male partner, is court-ordered to attend a peer support anger management group that is facilitated by a man who has a history of perpetrating domestic violence. For me, I interpreted it as a criticism of what sometimes passes for mental healthcare in America, and why it can be ineffective or potentially threatening to women. Expecting a woman who has been abused to find healing and “sameness” with an abuser is absolutely ridiculous, regardless of whether or not that man is still a danger or not. But it happens in the real world.

This touches on something that I think the podcast has missed before, specifically in their episodes on “13 Reasons Why”— that good mental healthcare in America is not readily accessible to people, and that what is accessible can be harmful to women who have been traumatized. Now, admittedly, it is my bent as a student of social work to focus on the impact of someone’s social environment rather than their internal cognitive processes as psychologists do. To me, this is a social justice issue, and that may place it outside the scope of what the Jedi Counsel hosts examine (and others in the field of psychology who have written or spoken about media depictions of psychological issues). That’s why I raise this discussion.

Much like how I saw “13 Reasons Why” as being less about depression and suicide than it was about the abuse and disempowerment that many American teenagers with mental illness and/or adverse experiences have faced, I saw “Jessica Jones” season two as less about PTSD and substance abuse than it was about the array of shit women have had to deal with in our lives and the anger we can (understandably) sometimes feel about it.

I guess my point, if I have one, is that there’s a broader scope to mental health than just “this is accurate/inaccurate for this condition in the DSM” or “this is/isn’t how a professional should respond.” Yes, that is all very important, and it does frustrate me that media portrays the dark side of psychology and mental health without the balance of showing psychotherapy in accurate and positive contexts. Yes, I do think these negative (and often stereotyped) portrayals of mental health issues are harmful in that they can leave people with the impression that there aren’t accessible options for them when they need help.

But, I also think it can be harmful to not acknowledge that a lot of us with mental health conditions have had negative experiences when seeking help (or being involuntarily forced into it). We have been met with unhelpful, unsafe, or downright damaging responses from professionals and systems that we thought would support us. Maybe, rather than assuming that storytellers are trying to be sensational, we should consider the possibility that they’re reflecting back to us some larger social failures in regards to the diverse experiences of those who suffer from mental illness. Yeah, sometimes media creators do sensationalize, but other times they use narratives to call out some very real barriers to service that many of us face due to criminal conviction, lack of resources, gender-based violence, or other social inequalities.

I get a bit frustrated at mental health professionals who call out these negative portrayals, yet fail to acknowledge that these things do happen. School counselors do fail to properly intervene when adolescents reach out for help. Quack practitioners do take advantage of vulnerable people with psychiatric and physical diagnoses, either to victimize them (as with Jeri Hogarth) or because they cling to harmful “alternative” therapy practices (as with the hypnotherapist Trish convinces Jessica to see for memory recovery). I’ve heard and read from licensed practitioners who rage about these portrayals and insist that this shit doesn’t happen, but it does. And yeah, maybe academics can recognize that this is bullshit, but most of us live in an entirely different world than academics do.

Yes, let’s push for more accurate representation of mental illness. Yes, let’s see empirically-based psychological and psychiatric treatments working for fictional characters, to normalize mental healthcare and show that there are options for treatment that work. I’ll be the first to say that therapy medication have given me the ability to live with my mental disorders.

But simply replacing all negative media portrayals with positive ones won’t magically fix mental health stigma, because it doesn’t change the fact that so many of us lack access to proper treatment in the first place, and are not equipped to discern what is helpful versus what is harmful. If anything, it would perpetuate a different false narrative— that anyone with a mental health problem can easily get help, and that help will definitely be safe and trustworthy, when the reality is that not every so-called counselor or group is helpful.

So when we have these experiences, get thrown off by these barriers, and loose hope in the system, we sometimes take solace in stories that reflect our experiences in mental healthcare, and we hope to start conversations about how it can and should be better.