This coming holiday is no exception, at theme parks haunted asylums abound, often portraying tortured, violent patients, chained to beds or undergoing electro shock treatments. Television shows, like the popular comedy Modern Family, show haunted asylums as the scariest place to be at Halloween. Costumes include suicide “kits” and strait jackets. The message is clear: People with mental illness are violent patients to be feared.
One mom took imagery to task this year, penning a blog called, “Stop Profiting from Pain,” (AnarchistSoccerMom.blogspot.com, Oct.22.) In it, Liza Long describes her son’s journey through mental illness, starting at age 4 when suicide ideations took hold, until age 13 when he was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
For Long, the diagnosis was a relief from years of misunderstood behaviors. Ultimately, however, she realized the diagnosis was just the beginning of a journey full of stigma and discrimination for her son. Long writes, “Many of the 10 million people[i] in America who are diagnosed with severe mental illness can live healthy, happy, productive lives. But instead of celebrating their bravery, our society stigmatizes their illness by mocking it in horribly offensive ways.”
This year, offensive mental asylum attractions were shut down at Knotts’ Berry Farm and Six Flags through the efforts of advocates such as Long and Ron Thomas, whose mentally ill homeless son was beaten to death by police in 2011.
Wal-Mart removed a latex suicide kit from its online store. However, many awful depictions remain. Often parents or patients who protest are told they are being too sensitive or can’t take a joke. For Long and many other advocates, the issue is about respecting these illnesses enough to not make them “attractions,” and the butt of jokes. Long posits, if her child had any other illness, he would be supported in the community in the traditional ways we have of showing support. Instead, her son faces ridicule and demeaning stereotypes every year at Halloween.
Pat Corrigan agrees. An expert in mental health stigma, Corrigan called the Halloween attractions, “ignorant and disrespectful, and irresponsible,” comparing the problem to restaurant chains that used to be marketed with images of negative racial stereotypes. Corrigan says, “It exacerbates the dangerous belief which fans the flames of discrimination — I’m not going to hire a person who is unpredictable and potentially violent. This only adds to self-stigma and a sense of shame when people internalize these ideas.” (Halloween attractions use mental illness to scare us. Here’s why advocates say it must stop., Washington Post, Oct. 25).
A petition and many vocal letters helped remove the Wal-Mart costume from its shelves. They also influenced many haunted house attraction companies to change the names of their attractions or remove the worst of the stigmatizing imagery. Companies that turn Halloween into entertainment at the expense of the mentally ill are exploiting the sick and the vulnerable for economic gain.
Bravo to all the determined advocates who are shaming them into stopping and to all the responsible companies that never even start. As Liza Long relates, “Our pain — and our loved ones’ pain — should never be used for entertainment or profit.”
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