Tanya Singh Netflix’s comedy, Insatiable, has met with harsh criticism from many organizations for its poor portrayal of eating disorders and lack of body positivity. The show follows the life of Patty Bladdel who is mockingly called “fatty patty”. She has an undiagnosed binge eating disorder (BED). She is constantly bullied by people for being fat. Bob, a lawyer cum pageant coach, takes her under his wing and starts preparing her for pageants. Patty binge eats to cope with extreme emotional turmoil. She is stuck in a vicious cycle. She hates being fat because she is bullied for it. She eats to cope with this. She hates herself for eating and in turn, putting on more weight. The show never talks about the fact that she binge eats because she has BED. It perpetuates the shame and disgust which is usually associated with a fat person eating, regardless of it being excessive or not. Everyone around her reinforces to feel ashamed and disgusted with her body. Even if she didn’t bin...

Asiket Singh Dhillon Neural Networking and pattern recognition are a rising force in technological sector. Once we can teach machines to ‘learn’, the avenues that machines can be used in are ever expanding. Improved neural networks could possibly yield higher efficiency rates in automatic screening of individuals who may have cognitive and behavioural abnormalities. Earlier this year Tulka Anhanai, Mohammed Ghassemi and James Glass came together to present their paper titled Detecting Depression with Audio/Text Sequence Modeling of Interviews. It puts forward a model of detecting depression in individuals which rather than relying on traditional iterations of uses, what they call “context-free” detection. Traditional models may analyse a set of answers to predetermined questions. For example, “How often do feel low/depressed?” / “Does your family have a history of any mental diagnoses?”. The model knows what a depressed person would say and compares the individual’s answers to...

Samarth Menon The character of Hannibal Lecter has been a cultural landmark in bringing psychiatric and mental illnesses into everyday conversation. The 2013 television show centered around the character, Hannibal , was instrumental in introducing all kinds of psychiatric conditions to its audience. One of the more significant episodes in the first season, Buffet Froid , stands out for its portrayal of a rare psychological disorder called Cotard’s Syndrome and how it connected to the larger issue of how rarer illnesses are handled by mental health professionals. However, where the show succeeds in bringing out these points, it also falls short by associating this rare condition with violent behavior. In the show, Georgia Madchen believes she is dead, and decaying, which is the central delusional belief in Cotard’s Syndrome. Along with Cotard’s Syndrome, she also suffers from prosopagnosia, which makes it impossible for her to recognize faces. This causes her to be paranoid and...

Sk Zafar Ali We often hear that mental health is a personal issue and if you are going through something, you should seek either counselling or medication or both. While this may be working for the upper and middle class whites; working class, minorities, and the differently abled are handed the short end of the stick. For decades, the number of cases of serious mental health disorders have been rising [1] and the “for-profit” healthcare system has largely failed to keep it in check. The system, built to favour big pharma, either denies treatment to those who can’t afford it, or try to get laws passed that forces treatment on individuals as long as it is profitable for them. [2] Furthermore, it has been reported that mental health professionals tend to discriminate on the basis of race and class – a middle class black man is 60% less likely for a therapist to agree to see him. The situation is worse for the working class when compared to the white middle class – therapists ...

Gaurika Kumar  Depression is one of the most commonly romanticised mental disorders. Movies more often than not trivialize the disorder as something easy to get over, and just a phase synonymous with sadness. These false depictions add to the pre-existing false, negative impressions of depression that exist in society. Art and mass media on one hand have played a big role in the dissemination of these stereotypes and misinformation, but on the other they also hold the power to fix these errors through artistic interpretations and accurate depictions of disorders. One such attempt is made by the film Tzadik. Tzadik, an Israeli animated short film by director Oriel Berkovits, aims at combating these generalised representations by personifying depression as a black smoke monster. Titled after the Hebrew word for righteous people, the film is set against a dark backdrop and emits an eerie vibe. It shows a boy sitting in a boat in the middle of an ocean with Depression. He is v...

Parvinder Udayan Of all the notorious serial killers known to the world, he is the most spoken of. Theodore (Ted) Bundy was a heinous murderer who was found guilty of raping, kidnapping and fatally assaulting more than 100 women. While attempting to study his behavior, psychologists came to the conclusion that Bundy could be classified as a High Factor 1 Psychopath. He was described as an intelligent, young man and characterized by his deceptive persona, manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or regret, and the inability to empathize. In 1975, Dr. Al Carlisle attempted to evaluate Bundy (before the world knew of his hideous crimes). It was difficult to determine him from a single personality disorder as his symptoms suggested that he suffered from a multiple of them. One of them is Oedipus complex, a psycho sexual disorder that is described as a child’s feelings of desire for his or her opposite-sex parent. Failure of its venturesome prompted him to develop severe aggression towar...

Parvinder Udayan Recently I met a younger cousin of mine. While chatting we started talking about superheroes and villains. He told me that his forever childhood idol  has changed. Batman with most liked superhero. The billionaire, playboy, slick haired Bruce Wayne with bat mobile, High tech gadgets, who fights Gotham’s  crimes by night. Ground beneath the Dark Knight was slipping away. The reason for that was a schizophrenic, psychopath, mad man. Psychological traits often associated with that legendary mentally ill character. It actually takes a close analysis as to why the character will go down as the greatest felons of all times.Irrational behavior is the first thing one expects of a person suffering from the above mentioned symptoms of mental disease. The joker displays disparity in this. He manages to outdo all of them. His actions are louder but his explanation for them is something one cannot help but agree upon. After robbing a bank in the pilot scene and kil...

Isha Deshmukh Sheldon: “Sheldon Cooper does not cry.” Howard : That's true, you'd rust. These lines perfectly sum up Sheldon Cooper’s character — a human robot. Anyone familiar with the sitcom The Big Bang Theory would know Sheldon and his quirks. The character checks off all the boxes of the eccentric genius trope. An unusually high IQ, a severe lack of social skills, narcissistic behavior that even frustrates the audience. Christine N. Winston of Women's Christian College in Chennai writes about how this trope is not entirely wrong as it is based on the Big-c type creativity of the “Four-c creativity model”. Big-c or eminent creativity is the kind found in people making revolutionary contributions to their respective fields — Einstein, Newton, Beethoven, Steve Jobs, or Steven Spielberg — scientists, musicians, artists, all exhibit this type. Sheldon’s eccentric characteristics include his child-like behavior of wanting things his way or throwing temper ta...

Gaurika Kumar Homeland is a TV show about Carrie Mathison (played by Claire Danes) who has Bipolar Disorder and has been critically acclaimed for being one of the best representations of mental illnesses on television in recent years The show revolves around her life and the challenges she faces while tackling international crises. It discusses themes of counterterrorism and espionage, and takes place in different locations including America, Pakistan, and Germany. Despite the unreliability and unpredictability that accompanies bipolarity, Carrie is at the top of her profession as a high-ranking agent at the CIA. It is an important show to discuss and dissect because the disorder isn’t used as a tool to progress the storyline, or as the main plot, but is rather carefully curated as a part of Carrie’s character. Bipolar Disorder is a mood disorder in which a person experiences episodes of both depression and mania. Genetic and biological factors have been known to pla...