Content Warning: The following article contains discussions of mental health conditions and violence.

From people with savant syndrome performing enormous computations in their heads to sufferers of schizophrenia having episodes of raging violence and mayhem, movies that misrepresent mental illness has been stereotyping disorders for decades. Mental illness manifests in a variety of ways, and Hollywood has been known to either downplay symptoms entirely or exaggerate them wildly for the sake of a movie's plot, both of which afford dangerously inaccurate perceptions to the public. For years, dissociative identity disorder cannot seem to be portrayed as anything other than terrifyingly violent and intrusive.

Fight Club to Psycho and in more recent movies like Split, where the disorder is seen as the antagonist of the movie. Inaccurate depictions of mental illness do as much to woefully misinform as they do to sensationalize, all in the name of entertainment. There are also movies that take mental illness and turn it into a joke, where a person's actions based on their disorder are played for laughs, which remains one of the most insulting ways that comedies utilize it. Finally, there are movies that misrepresent mental illness by turning them into a superpower. While some might think this empowers people, it often just dismisses the serious nature of the disorders to falsely create an overpowered protagonist.

20 Malcolm Rivers

Pruitt Taylor Vince, Identity

Identity was a horror thriller with a big mystery at its heart. The movie set up a series of strangers at a roadside motel and then has a serial killer targeting them one by one. It is obvious one of them is the killer, but the question is which one it is. At the same time, there is a serial killer awaiting execution on Death Row. The twist here is that Malcolm is the serial killer, but the victims are his alternate personalities, as he has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Identity has a psychiatrist hoping to find out which of the alters is the killer and eliminate it to save Malcolm from his execution. This is one case where DID is sensationalized and the idea that the alters could kill each other is normal in movies that misrepresent mental illness.

19 Kevin Wendell Crumb

James McAvoy, Split (2016)

M. Night Shyamalan is said to have consulted doctors about the reality of dissociative identity disorder before making Split, but the terrifying way it’s represented suggests he didn’t take much of their commentary seriously. The movie focuses on Kevin and his abduction of three young girls. He interacts with them as different personalities (he has 23). The audiences primarily see four (Dennis, Patricia, Hedwig, and Barry), but eventually "The Beast" (a dangerous amalgamation) appears, pure cinematic fiction, and the graphic nature of his violence, including killing his own therapist, paints people with dissociative identity disorder in a horrific light.

18 Charlie Baileygates

Jim Carrey, Me, Myself, and Irene (2000)

With Jim Carrey in the lead, movies that misrepresent mental illness were bound to include Me, Myself, and Irene. His mild-mannered Charlie character combined with the tough-talking Hank is supposed to be a manifestation of dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia. The film’s dark comedy comes from the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde antics that ensue when one personality tries to assert dominance over the other. Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions and paranoia but has no sign of multiple personalities, and with dissociative identity disorder, alters are not aware of each other. They cannot work together to fight enemies, nor can they fight each other, as they do in this movie.

17 Billy, Henry, Jack & Albert

Michael Keaton, Christpher Lloyd, Peter Boyle & Stephen Furst, The Dream Team (1989)

The Dream Team explores the ramifications of a group of mentally ill psychiatric patients permitted to leave the hospital ward and see a baseball game. Their supervisor is knocked unconscious, and they find themselves free to wander the streets of New York City, led by Billy (Michael Keaton). The characters are all stereotypes, with different psychological disorders. Billy is a nihilistic author, Henry (Christopher Lloyd) is a mail carrier who “went postal,” Jack (Peter Boyle) believes himself to be something akin to Jesus, and Albert (Stephen Furst) is compulsively obsessed with baseball broadcasts. The message of these movies that misrepresent mental illness posits that all they needed was a day in the “Real World” instead of psychotherapy and medications.

16 Andrew Largeman

Zack Braff, Garden State (2004)

Garden State tells viewers that if they’re diagnosed with a mental illness, but meet the right person, they won’t have to depend so much on medication and therapy. Such is the case for Andrew (Zach Braff) who’s taken antidepressants all his life for clinical depression, which only gets worse with the death of his mother. When he returns to his hometown for the funeral, he meets a bizarre girl (Natalie Portman) who shows him how to feel again. He goes off his medication because, in his mind, it was the pills that made his life joyless, not the depression. This mistakenly makes people who suffer from depression think they can just decide to be happy one day, and that it’s their lack of willpower that’s preventing them from being so. In reality, it’s genetics and/or a chemical imbalance in the brain.

15 Christian Wolff

Ben Affleck, The ant (2016)

The action-thriller The ant stars Ben Affleck as a A who served time for cooking the books for the world’s worst criminals — and while it made for a slick movie, it also severely misrepresented both autism and savant syndrome. Upon Christian Wolff's (Affleck) release, he starts up a tax firm to quietly reintegrate into society by day and go after the criminals he once worked for by night. He has been diagnosed with autism, and this allows him to be hyper-focused, but he has no social skills whatsoever. He can’t talk to women and has the need to “stim” constantly (a repetitive action an autistic person does to help regulate a state of extreme stress on their system). But, he is a world-class assassin thanks to his "superpower" of autism, an insulting trope in movies that misrepresent mental illness.

14 Bob Wiley

Bill Murray, What About Bob? (1991)

In What About Bob? Bill Murray plays Bob, a man with several psychological disorders and phobias. He becomes dependent on his doctor (Richard Dreyfuss) to guide him through his everyday challenges. When Dr. Marvin tries to go on vacation with his family, Bob’s neediness can’t allow him to be separated from his health professional. To treat someone as incapable as Bob, whose personality disorders make him incredibly clingy and unable to function without being taken care of, would take years of medication and therapy. Gaining acceptance from Dr. Marvin’s family was all it took to “conquer” his fears in one of the most grievous movies that misrepresent mental illness.

13 Arthur Fleck

Joaquin Phoenix, Joker (2019)

This origin story involving Gotham City's Clown Prince of Crime and Batman's greatest nemesis examines the role that society plays in forming a villain. It posits that a character like Arthur Fleck, derided by his peers for his unique mental illness (laughing or crying uncontrollably in inappropriate settings) could become The Joker if ostracized enough. Joker's mental illness makes him victimized, and the movie does a commendable job of highlighting society's fear about what it doesn't understand. But that fear of the obvious signs of mental illness quickly becomes validated when Fleck no longer takes his medication and becomes dangerously violent. His "descent into madness" requests viewers to have more comion for those with mental illness, then reduces them to a cluster of harmful stereotypes.

12 Norman Bates

Anthony Perkins, Psycho (1960)

While it’s lauded as one of the most effective thrillers that cinema has ever seen, Psycho comes by this reputation as one of the most famous movies that misrepresent mental illness. Norman Bates, the bashful caretaker of the Bates Motel, is overly attached to his mother, and witnessing her become attached to new men and dividing her attention drives him into a rage. He poisons her and her lover and assumes ownership of the motel. When Bates meets Marian, a lovely traveler that stops in for a room, he ends up violently murdering her in the shower. This was said to be the personality of “Mother” taking over and becoming jealous of his affection for another woman. People that have dissociative identity disorder don’t have a personality that becomes “aware” of the other personality, and they are not characterized by extreme violent rages.

11 The Narrator

Edward Norton, Fight Club (1999)

At its core, Fight Club is about a man with dissociative identity disorder struggling to live in a world that requires a dominant personality to take charge. The Narrator uses the charismatic Tyler (Brad Pitt) as a coping mechanism. Tyler takes over whenever The Narrator can’t find purpose in his life (because if “everyone is special,” no one is). The book actually coined the term “snowflake” to describe The Narrator's disassociation from society. Where Fight Club gets The Narrator's mental illness wrong is implying that the mundanity of his daily struggles triggered a mental break allowing the dissociative identity disorder to emerge. In reality, it would have taken severe trauma. And just as in other movies that misrepresent mental illness, each personality wouldn’t be aware of the other one, much less be able to have full-on conversations.