7 Factors why Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the best representation of Mental Illness on television

With the launch of month 4 nearby (reported to get October 12 th on Netflix) our company is eager to see just what is in shop for wild Ex-Girlfriend’s protagonist Rebecca lot. Until then listed here are 7 reasoned explanations why it looks getting among the best programs portraying existence with a mental ailment on television.

Written by Mary Hayes, Communications and Policy Officer

For people exactly who aren’t up to date in the Emmy and Golden planet winning collection right here’s what you must understand:

Profitable and powered, Rebecca Bunch abandons the woman lifestyle and partnership at a prestigious New York firm after an opportunity interviewing a former passionate interest. Lot up-and moves towards extremely unlikely area of western Covina, California so as to come across joy, fancy and adventure.

do not be put down by the show’s rainbow bright overstated musical data or apparently exhausted rom-com style story, nuts Ex-Girlfriend (CExG) proves they has one thing more deeply at its core, or as Rebecca herself sings for the beginning motif song ‘It’s more nuanced than that’.

End up being informed, spoilers forward!

1. Rebecca try ‘normal’

Many shows like the concerning “13 the explanation why” (which motivated a reply from the United states Psychiatric connection to parents and mental health professionals), “Mad Men”, and “Mr Robot”, have tried at including characters with a mental disease, with most falling level or worse, furthermore stigmatising those living with these conditions. The identities of these figures are usually defined or dominated by their own mental illness and consistently in a bad means. Here’s in which CExG varies. Rebecca isn’t a villain or a victim. You can find layers of complexity to the woman personality. She’s smart, she’s successful, she’s funny, she’s – for not enough https://datingreviewer.net/cs/fitness-seznamka/ a much better word – ‘normal’, since all are individuals with psychological state problems.

However, Rebecca, like other for the more characters inside the tv show, possess weaknesses and problems but these commonly her defining attributes. They might be along with a kaleidoscope of different facets of this lady personality that coexist alongside the lady issues. She works really in university, will get with the lady co-worker, and is capable visit run. But whenever she’s coping with some anxiousness, these ‘normalities’ tend to be influenced which is only if this lady problems tend to be triggered do we read their suffer. In portraying the countless layers of Rebecca the show illustrates perfectly the complexity of men and women, the humanity of people.

2. Compassion during the core

Unlike different reveals that spend period of their particular airtime increase into the erratic problem of their psychologically sick contribute, solely for the sake of a plot range, the most important two times of CExG were invested accumulating compassion for Rebecca as a complex dynamics with many really clear “quirks”.

Even if we see Rebecca turn on the woman closest family, you will need to grab her own life, and embark on payback after that was left within altar by the woman supposed soul mate Josh, we could however empathise with her when she reveals the true severity of the girl signs and symptoms. We see the girl closest pals band along on her behalf when she demands services, however without some truthful facts that could resonate with many those who have supported somebody in worry. The girl previous enemy-come-close friend Valencia requires Rebecca to promise she’ll never attempt suicide once more, to which Rebecca, in a marvellously practical step, replies is actually a promise she can’t making. Even then in which one could expect rage and stress just about all we see was compassion, sorrow and stress due to their buddy.

3. Recovery* try a procedure

When someone has a mental disease on television they often ‘go to therapy’, but we don’t constantly see just what goes on in treatment, and within several periods they have been ‘cured’ – only if it happened to be therefore easy during the real world! In Rebecca’s instance, we’re along with her every step of the lady restorative trip. Creating carried out a slew of data on borderline identity disorder (Rebecca’s medical diagnosis), the show’s designers understand that healing is not a swift procedure. As co-creator and journalist Aline Brosh McKenna told Vanity reasonable,