Aug 17 2012
Los Angeles Times: Mental Illness Sans Cliches
The shift in television characterizations might be a result of pressure from groups such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which sends out monthly newsletter alerts praising or panning entertainment portrayals of mental illness. Or maybe it's the fact that more than one-fourth of Americans, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder every year. No doubt, a lot of Hollywood insiders can relate. The more accurate portrayals might even be because creative folks are getting tired of the same old stories (Brink, 8/15).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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