What the hell is with the Tyler Barrol character in <i>Revenge</i>? What the hell is with the Tyler Barrol character in Revenge?
I love television, everything from Mad Men to Game of Thrones to sitcoms like New Girl. Lately, I’ve been watching the latest hit drama to come from the States, Revenge, along with about 2 million other Australians, apparently.
It’s got everything; sex, drama, swapped identities, bitchy mother-in-laws… and you could play a serious drinking game with all the meaningful glances and the staring-apprehensively-over-the-shoulder-of-the-person-you-are-hugging-because-you-are-hiding-such-a-terrible-secret-ness of it all.
But one thing is really bothering me – and at the risk of sounding too PC I think I should call them on it.
What the hell is with the Tyler Barrol character? I get the whole Talented Mr Ripley aesthetic they were going for, until they had to spoil it all by clumsily giving him a mental illness.
In a recent episode Typer was shown taking Clozapine, the last-resort medication for schizophrenia. It can relieve really serious symptoms that no other medication has been effective for, but its side effects are pretty severe, and can be deadly.
By showing Tyler taking Clozapine, they are buying in to some of the lowest, saddest misconceptions people have about schizophrenia: that people with the condition are scary, and dangerous.
Tyler went from an aggressive social-climber who was angry at the world, to a violent, unpredictable ‘crazy’.
Now, first of all, this pisses me off because it’s stupid. Have you ever met anyone with schizophrenia, or someone experiencing a psychotic episode? I’m sure the Revenge writers haven’t.
For one thing, when you have schizophrenia and your illness is flaring up, it is characterised by confusion, delusion, disordered thoughts and non-goal directed behaviour.
It is not characterised by the ability to charm billionaires, trick CEOs into giving you powerful positions in companies, and carry-out complicated social manipulations that involve woo-ing several people at once.
Casting Tyler as in the midst of serious schizophrenia that he has just been hospitalised for is like casting Daniel Grayson as a dorky kid from community college with a public-speaking phobia.
But that’s ok, right? We can deal with a little bit of bad characterisation in our trash TV.
Except research has shown that when people watch negative portrayals of people with mental illness, they tend to believe them.
Jaelea Skehan, the program manager at the Hunter Institute of Mental health and Mindframe, the National Media Initiative in Australia, says research clearly shows that media representations of mental illness clearly influence our attitudes.
“And film and TV seems to have a stronger influence than even the news media,” she says.
It makes sense, really - most people don’t know someone with schizophrenia, or, if they do, they might not know it because the stigma around the condition means people often don’t admit they have it.
And when we do hear something it is a high-profile tragic media case of a murder or suicide.
“Unfortunately it’s a common misconception that people with schizophrenia are more likely to be violent,” Skehan says.
“Schizophrenia is one of the most misunderstood of all health conditions, not just mental health, and people fear what they don’t understand”.
In truth, while some studies have found higher rates of violence among people with schizophrenia, it is among people with a co-existing substance abuse problem, and even then, they are not more dangerous than any other person with a substance abuse problem.
Skehan says that not only do dodgy characterisations like the Tyler character help spread the dangerous and cruel myth that schizophrenia = violence among the wider population, it can even cause people to self-stigmatise when they are diagnosed.
“It’s not uncommon for people to get a diagnosis of schizophrenia and believe they are going to become violent, and that’s problematic”.
So Revenge, I call bullshit on you. I’ll take your bitchy mother-in-law stereotypes, your clichéd character development and schlocky plot-line, but can you please leave schizophrenia alone? People with schizophrenia have enough to deal with already.

Sumber: http://www.dailylife.com.au/health-and-fitness/dl-wellbeing/hey-revenge-writers-be-careful-how-you-portray-mental-illness-20120501-1xw2e.html