Psychiatrist, psychotherapist, narcologist, forensic psychiatric expert Marina Igorevna Runkova in an interview with the "At the Crossroads" channel told about how mental disorders are imposed on children and adolescents through popular culture, music and films. What symptoms of schizophrenia are broadcast to the masses by show business figures, and how does this threaten society?
Mental disorders as a public relations tool
“Mental illness, like any other, has a wide range of symptoms, many of which are trending today - they are shown in films or broadcast from the stage. One gets the impression that the figures of contemporary art: musicians, actors, directors - have exhausted their reserves of creative inspiration and began to broadcast the presence of mental disorders with the aim of black PR.
This is a great threat to the mental health of the audience, since the lines between norm and pathology are blurred. Psychiatrists know such an effect as the feeling of illness in the doctor himself when communicating with a patient. Moreover, in the old medical literature, such sensations were presented as a reliable sign of the disease. That is, if a person can infect you with some kind of behavior model (illogical judgments, the very feeling of illness, obscene antics, statements), then this person is probably sick. This is also associated with numerous jokes addressed to psychiatrists, such as: "Whoever put on a gown first is a doctor."
Jokes as a joke, and in neurolinguistic programming, such an identification with other objects is considered the basis for any manipulation and suggestion. Moreover, if we are talking about personal contact, then manipulation is possible in both directions, it all depends on who is conducting the dialogue. But in the case of communication between musicians and their fans, the recipient - that is, the one who receives this mental infection - is the audience and the audience. So it turns out that, to a large extent, it is the artists who determine the mental health or ill health of society. A person accepts the influence of the transmitted images at a subconscious level, completely unaware of what is happening. It is this process that is described by the adage that a bad example is contagious.
If you take a critical look at modern show business, it will become clear why there is so much destructiveness in our society today, why adolescents and children so willingly broadcast deviant forms of behavior: they smoke, use psychoactive substances, participate in fights, swear. By and large, they have someone to imitate - they imitate their "star" idols and follow them.
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Sloppy and pretentiousness is a sign of schizophrenia
I must say that of all psychiatric pathologies, schizophrenia is probably the most famous and most popular, and it is its symptoms that are now willingly broadcast by artists to the masses through their work. Deviant behavior concerns not only some aggressive antics, but also the way of life. The most striking is the schizoid appearance, which consists of two factors: slovenliness and pretentiousness.
As for slovenliness, it, of course, can be a symptom and sign of various pathologies - for example, drug addiction, mental retardation, dementia, and other mental disorders. But with schizophrenia, sloppiness is especially striking, it is different, it cannot be confused with anything. Tellingly, modern show business stars seem to be competing with each other in this slovenliness. Especially Hollywood actors. Journalists even rank these slovenly dressed people.
The other side is pretentiousness. It must be understood that pretentiousness is not just bad taste, it is a loud, bright, variegated appearance with many details. This is inappropriate extravagant behavior, this is some kind of intricate speech patterns. Today, pretentiousness is no longer only characteristic of artists. Now children, adolescents, and adults alike are beginning to try on such images, calling them fashion. Many people dye their hair bright colors, claiming that this is normal. They begin to wear some kind of ridiculous clothes, accessories to it, make flashy, flashy tattoos - again repeating the behavior of their idols.
All this together forms the prerequisites for blurring the boundaries between what we considered to be the norm before and what is considered the norm now. Between good and bad, between sick and healthy. And this is another unpleasant, but striking symptom of schizophrenia - a decrease in critical perception. When painful processes that are already underway are not perceived as pathological.
Sexual promiscuity and autism
Schizophrenia can manifest itself vividly not only when the disease has blossomed, but also at the very beginning - for example, if regressive symptoms develop. A kind of autism inside out - today such mental disharmony among artists is extremely popular. This pathology manifests itself when a person begins to demonstrate everything that should be hidden, that should be personal. For example, sexual liberation, which is a normal part of family life, suddenly turns into sexual disinhibition. A person begins to publicly perform characteristic movements, tell his intimate dreams, share details of his sexual life (he can calmly offer some unambiguous activities, he can easily talk about his animal nature and the need to satisfy it).
Autism inside out is also a pathological lack of distance between people, swaggering looseness. That is, a person does not feel any brakes when communicating with another. For example, many performers swear very easily from the stage, cover their listeners with obscenities and dirt. And, surprisingly, they find a response to this: fans are happy with this behavior of their idols. This demonstrates the bi-directional nature of unhealthy degradation processes where both sides feed each other.
Autism inside out must be distinguished from moral degradation, from banal licentiousness. Often, artists themselves see this difference between the norm and the pathology, and use schizophrenic symptoms for the purpose of PR and making money. But this difference is often hidden from the understanding of adolescents who imitate popular performers without a second thought. They can even, under certain conditions, induce the development of mental illness in themselves. Of course, this is influenced by many factors - hormonal and age-related changes, the difference between norm and pathology erased from the entire generation, and so on. But in any case, following his idol, the child runs the risk of becoming a frequenter of psychiatric hospitals.
As an illustrative example, we can recall the madmen trying on the image of the king or Napoleon. The stage today is full of such. And one of the first at one time was Zhanna Aguzarova, who called herself "a heavenly guest from the red planet" and pointed this way to a hospital bed.
Of course, someone will say that an artist alone or his music cannot lead to the development of mental illness, and this is true. But the influence of the creativity of show business figures can be compared with the influence of tobacco on the development of cancer. We all understand that a cigarette by itself cannot cause lung cancer. There are a lot of people who smoke in packs and nothing happens to them. But the fact that nicotine and smoking contribute to the development of these diseases, no one argues with this. The performers and their creativity have the same effect on the masses. Could they alone cause schizophrenia? Probably not. Does psychotization of society and individuals contribute? Of course yes.
If this border between norm and pathology continues to blur, then we risk being in a truly infected and infected with mental illness environment. Schizophrenia is, of course, fashionable. Just know what the problem is? The natural result of schizophrenia is the state of the vegetable - the final and irrevocable stage of the disease."
Author: Dmitry Martyanov
