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Post by Michael Roberts on Nov 4, 2016 21:31:29 GMT -4
I can understand the problem with these amusement park depictions of mental illness, but these days mental illnesses are depicted in movies and novels as well. Some individual has repeatedly been labeled as having "personality disorder", which is no longer a mental illness According to the DSM V. Haunted asylum attractions are based on times where society had very little knowledge of mental illness, not our current asylums. Halloween it's not a time to make fun of people with different psychiatric conditions.
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Post by Kathleen Jourdan on Nov 8, 2016 15:38:08 GMT -4
This article reminds me of a friend of mine, who has son shows text book signs of Bipolar disorder, but she does not want to get an official diagnosis due to the stigma the disorder holds. This is a personal example, but it makes me wonder how many people have committed suicide because of this stigma. What is depicted their destination.in the media shows a horrific and even painful image of what would happen if one was diagnosed as "crazy", without any context in reality. How many people, with this image in their minds, have chosen suicide or self harm, over being treated. Not only does it affect the patient, it also affects the family as well. If my child has a mental illness, What will people think? What will they do? How will we be treated? They start acting differently, avoiding things, and not living a full live due to this perceived stigma. The article makes a good point when it says that these Halloween displays never depict a cancer ward, because who would make a horrible illness scary and give it a stigma?. What these organization are missing is that mental illness is just as debilitating and life changing as any of the other serious medical illnesses, and in many cases there is no cure.
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Post by Pamella Yamada on Nov 8, 2016 15:53:26 GMT -4
I think that eliminating the image of mental patients in haunted attractions is a step in the right direction in changing the stigma of mental illness. I think there is still much more that needs to be done though, and I think that part of why asylums are generally portrayed in haunted attractions is because it plays into people's fears. When the media depicts serial killers and mass shooters as having mental illness, it causes fear in people more than ghosts and zombies can. Mental illness cannot be used as the label for people who do bad things in the media if we want people to stop "fearing" those suffering from such disorders. But glad to have people speak out against the depictions in haunted attractions and even more glad to see that companies are responding!
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Post by Roy E Villafane on Nov 20, 2016 11:43:59 GMT -4
I'm against those kind of parks because with time they had desensitized the population and Halloween is the perfect time for those kind of entertainment parks to portrayed diseases and conditions that people don't really understand and just over expose the symptoms that they can take advantage of and just try to scare more people. Now days people see those conditions like schizophrenia like a person that see or heard things. That exactly is the problem those attractions just portrayed one or two features of the disease and people just don't respect or don't look up more into the disease. Is time to stop the stigma of the conditions and try to educate people.
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