The Romanticization of Mental Health Issues in the Media

Coming of age has been a successful tv genre for quite some time now, a genre that typically goes through teens growing up or young adults. These shows may have had their ups and downs as any show but something that needs to be talked about is how these shows – and media in general – tend to romanticize mental health struggles, substance abuse, and toxic relationships. These shows tend to influence teens heavily and these are focal points in the shows that were or were not portrayed well.

 Let’s begin with “Skins UK;” as previously stated this is a coming-of-age series released in 2007, available to watch on Hulu. “Skins” is a show that goes through the lives of eight teens and all of their issues and struggles. For example, Cassie Ainsworth, one of my favorite characters, has an extremely bad eating disorder, which is portrayed terribly. While this is something that many young adults and teens struggle with, and representation is important, the way Cassie’s character is portrayed really doesn’t respect her struggle. She is made out to be the “pretty, petite, slightly annoying but still lovable” girl, making people either love or hate her character. Many 

teens enjoy her character, and since she is so loved and pretty may take inspiration from her, which isn’t good to begin with, but then when the show feeds into this and goes as far to show Cassie failing to get help with her ED. Before Cassie goes to the Restoration Clinic, she is seen stuffing weights in her skirt to make her weigh more, since she knows the nurse will make her empty out her jacket pockets when she goes to get weighed, and she knows the skirt won’t be questioned. This is a problem as it is just blatantly showing people how to mimic this behavior to avoid proper treatment. This is important due to the representation being so poorly executed, that people will just take this information and view it as a good way to be skinny and pretty wh

en in reality it is an extremely unhealthy condition that many people struggle to treat. Cassie’s entire character is just a cry for help and people don’t see this, they just see her as the pretty girl who they can “relate to.”

Another “Skins” example is Michelle and Tony’s relationship. This relationship had so many problems, they had been dating from the start of the show.

Tony was a part of this church choir group, Michelle had suspicions of Tony cheating on her with one of the choir girls named Abigail, and during one big performance she did catch them together. Michelle is hurt by this incident but they end up staying together. After a while of more ups and downs between the couple, Tony gets hit by a bus and ends up losing his memory almost completely. For some reason, Michelle can’t comprehend and accept it, while Michelle is already having a hard time Abigail attempts to steal Tony and start a relationship with him since he can’t remember Michelle being with him. This was just one of their major issues as a couple. With all these events in mind, it seems impossible that this relationship would be portrayed in a good light, but the S

kins audience still manages to twist things to view Michelle and Tony as “couple goals” and just ignore their problems completely.

As for the partying, this is a massive part of the issue and glamorizing in the media as teens take inspiration from these shows and think it is cool. In “Skins,” partying is a major topic. As expressed earlier in just a few of the examples, there are a lot of problems that the teens face and should work on solving rather than drowning them out with substance abuse and partying. All of these parties contain alcohol and many different drugs. In the long run, nothing good comes out of this, it just results in more issues and difficulties for the teens. Then since in the shows it is seen that they are having the time of their lives and are carefree, viewers will only pick up on that and twist it into something it’s not, leading them to take it on for themselves since it looks like such a good thing and such a fun way to cope and push away your problems.

While some people may think, “you are the one making it a problem, it’s showing teen struggles” that’s where you aren’t exactly correct. Yes, while it is showing teen struggles, these serious struggles are being portrayed in ways that they shouldn’t. In Skins Cassie’s eating disorder is ruining her, deteriorating her health day by day. However, the show depicts her as being successful by being skinny, and many teens will idolize her for this. It is so easy to find teens saying how they would love to look like Cassie and be her or they do relate to her, which isn’t something to brag about. Even if this representation were to be made more accurate, teens might not see all of the negatives to the drug usage and the mental illnesses being presented in the show; they are going to look at how pretty the characters are, how careless they are while partying and on drugs. This behavior could get mocked in either situation so easily. Teens will not always realize how wrong this is and they see people up to beauty standards or in a popular show and go, “wow I really want to be like that, it’s so cool.” And get these goals that are only going to cause harm for them.