Making Drama out of a Crisis: Authentic Portrayals of Mental Illness in TV Drama

A new study published by Shift finds that, despite clear improvements over recent years, prime time TV drama struggles to present an accurate picture of mental illness.

Making Drama out of a Crisis aims to encourage writers, producers, directors and commissioners of television drama to enter into a debate about these issues and how they portray mental illness on TV. Mental health charities, experts and people with mental health problems are keen to join this discussion.

Making Drama out of a Crisis looks at three months of TV drama broadcast between 4pm and 11pm on UK terrestrial channels.

Researchers found 74 episodes from 34 different programmes that contained mental illness-related storylines.

Researchers also spoke to programme makers and members of the public - both with and without personal experience of mental health problems - about protrayals of mental illness in TV drama.

The report finds that:

• 45% of peak-time programmes with mental illness storylines portrayed people with mental health problems as posing a threat to others.
  
• 63% of references to mental health were pejorative, flippant or unsympathetic.
  
• 45% of programmes had sympathetic portrayals, but these often portrayed the characters as tragic victims.

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Download the Making Drama out of a Crisis full report
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