Asylum, schizophrenia, electroshock ... five clichés on psychiatry in the cinema

DECRYPTION

Since September 18, 

, the new series from Netflix, invites you to delve into the past of Mildred Ratched, the evil head nurse of

, the cult film by Milos Foreman released in 1976 Without doubt one of the most chilling roles of "villain" in cinema.

For the occasion, the psychiatrist Christophe Debien, co-host of the Youtube channel PsyLab and author of

at humenSciences, on mental illness in the cinema, was the guest of

, the health program of 'Europe 1.

"To make good stories you need drama, and one of the uses of psychiatry by screenwriters is to introduce drama or mysteries into a film," he observes.

Even if it means distorting the medical reality… From the asylum transformed into a penitentiary to the schizophrenic who changes personality like socks, Christophe Debien dissects for us five clichés on psychiatry largely fed by the big screen.

>> Find all of Sans rendez-vous in replay and podcast here

Asylum-prison

For Christophe Debien, the association with the cinema of asylum and prison dates precisely from

.

"Even if this film was shot in a real asylum", its white walls, its celled cells and its courtyard surrounded by barbed wire inevitably evoke a penitentiary center.

"And this cliché died hard", notes our psychiatrist.

Since almost twenty years later, the asylum scene in

will be shot… in a prison.

Punitive therapy: electroshock

The electroshock scene has become a staple in films or series that take place in asylums, often associated with a critical moment in the plot.

Here again, we find it in

, or in

.

And each time, the therapy turns into a torture session, often leaving the patient in a catatonic state.

"Seismotherapy saves lives. It can treat very serious diseases", reminds Christophe Debien.

"We call it electroshocks because we put a low current at the level of both temples, and we pass it for a few milliseconds to arrive at an epileptic seizure and resynchronize the neurons," he explains. .

"There is also a release of neurotransmitters at this time which act much faster than an antidepressant on melancholy, which is the most severe form of depression."

Our specialist notes that in the

series

, the character played by Claire Danes, suffering from bipolar disorder, welcomes the positive effects of electroconvulsive therapy on her disease.

He who kills is necessarily mad

"In the cinema, the killer is generally mad or possessed", observes Christophe Debien.

But according to him, only 3% of "blood crimes" are committed by the mentally ill.

"This association between the killer and mental illness allows human beings to reassure themselves: it is the other, the one I do not recognize, who is weird, who kills," he analyzes.

"It's always easier than telling yourself that you are incapable, yourself, with your own impulses, of killing someone."

Schizophrenia painted as a split of personality

In cinema, schizophrenia is often associated with a split personality.

And yet, it is not a symptom of this mental disorder, no matter how severe.

So to whom do we owe this cliché, widely used in cinema, from

to

, via

 ?

"Au

D'Hitchcock", answers Christophe Debien.

"Hitchcock had been scalded by the filming of

, where he wanted to film the unconscious", continues our specialist.

"For this, he called on Salvador Dali. They argued so much that Hitchcock changed his way of showing the psyche and had the idea on

of a split personality."

An idea so cinégenic and likely to feed reversals of situation that it did not fail to be copied abundantly.

In the eyes of Christophe Debien,

by Ron Howard, inspired by the life of mathematician John Forbes Nash, is one of the few films to deal realistically with schizophrenia, especially the difficulty of diagnosing and treating it. .

Love that can overcome depression

A deeply depressed hero, but ultimately saved by the love of a loved one… this is the kind of happy ending that Christophe Debien does not want to hear about.

"Medically, it is absolutely irrelevant. Love has never healed anything, at least much worse than drugs", he observes, even if the attention of those around him remains , obviously, essential in the healing process.

However, this is "a cliché that also terribly harms the image of women in cinema", insists this doctor.

"Most of the therapists on the screen are women who heal their patients by sleeping with them. This reinforces both the stereotypes about women and about psychiatry," he laments.