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Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness By Otto F Wahl. Rutgers University Press, distributed through The Eurospan Group, London WC2E 8LU. October 1997, 260pp. 23 b&w illustrations. Hardback L20.95, ISBN 0-8135-2212-9. Paperback L13.50, ISBN 0-81352213-7.
This book, by a clinical psychologist, contains a comprehensive description of portrayals of mental illness in the American media in the last 20 years - in films and videotapes, on TV and in novels. The dominant theme, epitomised by Hitchcock's Psycho and repeated endlessly in dozens of third rate films and novels, is that of the sinister psychotic killer who murders innocent people (usually attractive young women, of course) who have the misfortune to cross his path. Even when characters identified as mentally ill are not homicidal or even aggressive they are rarely portrayed in a sympathetic light. Typically they look odd, both in facial appearance and dress with wild eyes and uncombed hair, and are either incompetent or comic or both. Perhaps even more significantly, they are rarely identified...