Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

I’ve been thinking about my answer to this all week, and I really only have an answer to the last question. These types of portrayals piss me off. They portray mental illness as something to be either pitied or feared - or in many cases, as with Joker, both. As I’m sure we here are all aware, mental illness is more the norm than it is anything else. If you’re not mentally ill, you know someone who is. If you’re not touched by mental illness in some way, you’re lying to yourself! These movies are sensationalizing and stigmatizing something that should be seen as being just as everyday normal as getting sick with cancer or whatever other sickness of the day people want to rally around. How would I do it differently? I wouldn’t do it at all. I would make my mentally ill characters just every day characters. Same as every other character, just living their lives, cause that’s what we are! Just people, living our lives. The masses need to see that.