Depictions of Mental Illness in Batman Comic Books

The public holds inaccurate, and largely negative, ideas about persons with mental illness. Inaccurate views of persons with mental illness can contribute to persons with mental illness being isolated socially, experiencing difficulty obtaining work, being treated unfairly in the community, and being less likely to seek treatment due to the negative stigma surrounding mental illness. Previous research has indicated a wide variety of types of media have depicted persons with mental illness as dangerous and likely to commit violent acts. The present research focused on a specific subset of media, comic books featuring the character of Batman. These books were chosen on the basis that characters in the books are often suggested to have a mental illness and the suggestion that a character’s mental illness significantly contributes to their violent and antisocial behaviors. The results suggest that characters in Batman comic books are frequently identified as having a mental illness. Instances of identified characters were found to be violent, aggressive, cruel and unattractive. They were frequently show to commit violent behaviors and in the few instances when treatment was shown, it was rated as unhelpful.