A dated and harmful stereotype that has come up far too many times is the violent nature of patients in asylums. Titles like Outlast, Manhunt 2 and even a personal favourite of mine, Batman: Arkham Asylum have kept psychiatric care portrayed as unrefined and dangerous in its treatment of its patients, despite clear advances made well before these games were made. The portrayals have been so bad that Manhunt 2, which portrays a protagonist escaping an asylum while fighting off its inhabitants, has been publicly denounced by The National Alliance on Mental Health due to its “irresponsible, stereotyped portrayal of mental illness”. It is understandable why so many horror games include this as it is a simple yet effective way of getting scares out of people but as games get more and more mainstream, it is essential that they steer clear of reinforcing these dated ideas. Sadly though, with games like the upcoming Asylum, it may still be a while before this happens.
Even the depiction of mental illness in protagonists has been poor with it being used as an excuse to portray bizarre game mechanics and justify violent natures. Games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Darkest Dungeon depict sanity levels for the player which will lower in the presence of darkness, monsters and other disturbing events, causing weird behaviour from the player and hallucinations. While this does add an interesting element to the game, it can feel in poor taste when it sensationalises different illnesses into features of a video game. Even non-horror titles like Sims 3 with its “Insane” trait as portrayed by its characters through bizarre clothing and talking to themselves is meant to give a comedic and interesting element to the gameplay, but mostly just achieves a deprecating depiction of mental illness.
However, as I mentioned at the start, games as a medium are constantly growing and maturing and thankfully the depictions of mental illness have not all been bad. A great example is Hellblade: Seuna’s Sacrifice which accurately portrayed psychosis, the condition where people see or hear things that are not there. This wasn’t done through some fluke from the developers but by educating themselves through groups like a healthcare company here in the UK, Wellcome, in order to ensure the depictions were actually accurate. The game received lots of praise for its depiction of mental illness to the point the BAFTA game awards even made a brand new category for it - “Game Beyond Entertainment”.
Games still have a long way to come and a great many hurdles to overcome in the quest for true and consistent representation for all things, not just mental illness. But with each line of code, each character model and each line of dialogue recorded, I like to think we are getting closer.