Pop Culture's Romanticization of Mental Illness and How to Push Back
There's a particular kind of character who has taken up residence in our screens for decades, and lately she has been joined by several cousins. She is dreamy, fragile, brilliant, possibly self-destructive, and almost always more interesting to others than she is to herself. When the script needs depth, mental illness is wheeled in like a prop: a sad girl in a thunderstorm, a brooding artist with a prescription bottle, a recovering addict whose recovery is the least interesting part of her.
Australian viewers have grown up with these versions. The marathon you watched in a Melbourne share house, the playlist you built in a Brisbane bedroom, the moody film you streamed on a delayed Sydney train — all of them have absorbed these scripts. The trouble is not that stories about mental illness should not exist. They absolutely should. The trouble is that so many of them treat distress as decoration, and that has consequences well beyond the credits.
The long shadow of the manic pixie dream girl
The manic pixie dream girl, a term coined by critic Nathan Rabin to describe a stock character whose quirks exist solely to enlighten a brooding male lead, set the template. She is whimsical, damaged, and ultimately disposable. She appears, she heals the man, she vanishes or dies. Her eating disorder, her depression, her impulsivity are not experiences to be understood; they are signifiers of her mystery.
In the years since, that template has fractured and multiplied. We now have the unhinged genius of Killing Eve's Villanelle, who packages trauma into a brand; the fragile singer archetype of countless prestige dramas; the cold, possibly-autistic coder whose emotions arrive late as a twist. The newer trend is the "sad girl autumn" aesthetic, where melancholia becomes a wardrobe choice and a Spotify playlist. Each of these variations borrows the same licence: mental illness as flavour, not fact.
This matters because stories shape expectations. When the only depressed characters we see are also charming and thin, audiences start to assume depression looks that way, and to miss it in people whose suffering is less photogenic — including themselves.
Trope or truth? reading on-screen mental illness
Decoding these patterns is easier once you can name them. Below, common on-screen portrayals are paired with what is usually missing from them, and what a more grounded version might include. None of this is a call to stop telling difficult stories. It is a way of telling when a story is telling the truth.
| On-screen portrayal |
What the script usually skips |
What a more honest version includes |
| Manic pixie dream girl |
Daily fatigue, medical appointments, financial cost |
The character's own goals beyond the love interest |
| Tortured artist |
Creative blocks, financial precarity, recovery work |
Friends who stay, therapy, slow days |
| Recovering addict |
Withdrawal, shame, relapse |
Community support, ongoing triggers, small wins |
| Quiet sad girl |
Appetite loss, concentration problems, irritability |
Help-seeking, mixed progress, family friction |
| Unhinged assassin |
Actual psychiatric care, side effects of medication |
Routine, vulnerability, consequences |
The point is not to scold every screenwriter. Some shows do this beautifully, and if you want a closer look at how some recent characters have tried to break the mould, the strong female character critique is worth reading.
What young Australians are actually inheriting
Australian research paints a clearer picture than most scripts do. The Black Dog Institute's surveys have found that roughly one in four young Australians aged sixteen to twenty-four experience a mental health condition in any given year. Headspace centres in places like Fremantle, Parramatta and Cairns are booked out weeks in advance, and the Mental Health Treatment Plan, which gives Medicare-subsidised access to up to ten psychology sessions a year, is often the first thing a young person learns about adulting.
When the cultural scripts around distress are as distorted as they currently are, help-seeking becomes harder. Young women, who are statistically more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression, also report feeling that their real symptoms do not match the dramatic ones they have absorbed. Borderline personality disorder is so rarely portrayed accurately that many people first hear of it through memes rather than medical advice. The cultural noise around ADHD, particularly on TikTok, often skips the boring parts — the paperwork, the titration appointments, the waiting lists for paediatricians in regional NSW.
Australian screens, Australian realities
Our local media landscape is part of the conversation. ABC iview and SBS On Demand have commissioned more grounded dramas in recent years, including Total Control and The Newsreader, both of which deal with psychological strain without making it a style choice. Stan's local originals have started to follow suit, while Netflix's global catalogue continues to ship glossy portrayals that often bypass the lived texture of distress.
Regulatory frameworks matter too. The Australian Classification Board's guidelines ask platforms to flag content that depicts suicide and self-harm responsibly, and the eSafety Commissioner has published resources aimed at young people who encounter distressing material online. Still, these tools reach a fraction of what actually lands in our feeds. The cultural work of pushing back on glamorisation happens less in Canberra and more in the group chat where someone asks, "Wait, did anyone else find that show really triggering?"
Reading media with a slower eye
A critical eye does not require a media studies degree. It mostly requires the willingness to pause and ask a few uncomfortable questions when a show uses a mental health condition as a plot device. Who is this character, beyond their diagnosis? What does the camera linger on, and what does it leave out? Does the character ever receive treatment, and is that treatment shown with any accuracy? Does the story reward their suffering, or does it cost them something?
It also helps to notice who is in the room when these scripts get written. The push for more lived-experience consultants in Australian screenwriting rooms, partly driven by Screen Australia's development programs, has changed the texture of recent projects. So has the rise of writers' rooms that include neurodivergent and disabled creators, rather than using those experiences as raw material. When you watch a show and feel that something rings true about a character, ask who in the credits has actually lived what is on the screen.
What pushback looks like for viewers
There are some practical habits worth building into the way we watch, share, and recommend stories. None of them are about cancelling shows or refusing to engage with difficult material. They are about doing it with a bit more care.
- Notice whose suffering is framed as beautiful, and whose is treated as ugly, and ask why.
- Read or watch at least one piece of writing by someone who has lived the condition the character has, especially if the show itself is written by people who have not.
- If a show handles mental illness well, say so publicly; reviews and social posts shape what gets recommissioned.
- If a show handles it badly, name what is missing rather than just complaining that the character is "annoying".
- Support Australian screen stories that take their characters seriously, including quieter ones that do not always trend on streaming charts.
- Mute or unfollow accounts that use diagnosis labels as aesthetic shorthand, and replace them with creators who offer nuance.
- Use the Mental Health Treatment Plan if you find that fictional portrayals are stirring up real feelings, and consider seeing a psychologist who can help you sort fiction from your own experience.
Building stories that refuse the cliché
For anyone who writes, podcasts, or shapes stories in any small way, the work of pushback is mostly in the margins. Give your characters a Tuesday afternoon. Let their medication have side effects. Show them cancelling plans because they are exhausted, not because they are mysterious. Pay lived-experience consultants properly, and credit them. If a character is going to have a breakdown, show them also having the unremarkable weeks that follow.
This is the kind of slow, unsexy work that does not make for a great trailer. It is also what makes a story stay with someone. Australian readers and viewers are already pushing back in small ways: writing into podcasts, leaving thoughtful reviews on Stan and iview, sharing resources in Discord servers, showing up to screenings of local films. If you want to do that work more visibly, you can read about how I work with writers and other creators on my services-i-offer page, where the conversations usually start.
The thing to keep at the front of your mind, next time a sad girl in a striped shirt walks onto your screen, is that someone in your life has probably felt the way she is being shown to feel, and they did not look like her, and they did not sound like the playlist you are hearing. The characters we choose to take seriously, and the ones we let slide as decoration, are part of how we treat each other. That is not a small thing.
