Can depictions of depression in movies, TV shows, and books help raise awareness of what it’s like to have the condition?
As of 2021, approximately 21 million U.S. adults — or 8.3 percent of the U.S. adult population — had an episode of major depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
But despite being one of the most common mental health conditions in the United States, depression is often misunderstood as simply feeling sad.
While everyone feels sad from time to time, not everyone experiences depression — a mood disorder involving symptoms such as persistent sadness, loss of interest or pleasure in things you used to enjoy, social withdrawal or isolation, irritability, or fatigue for at least two weeks, per the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
What’s more, people with depression also often deal with stigma, or negative and often unfair beliefs society holds about someone or something. Mental health stigma is often rooted in misunderstanding or fear, and inaccurate media depictions of conditions like depression can contribute significantly to that, according to the APA.
“By accurately depicting mental health in the media, we continue to destigmatize diagnoses and hopefully increase the amount of individuals seeking the appropriate help and support they deserve without any fears or hesitations to do so,” says Alisha Bowker, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Louisville, Kentucky.
What a Sensitive Depiction of Depression Does (and Does Not) Look Like
Depictions of mental health conditions like depression are relatively rare in TV and movies, according to a joint report published in May 2019 by the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Initiative, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the David and Lura Lovell Foundation.
As of 2019, only 7 percent of TV characters and 1.7 percent of movie characters experienced a mental health condition like depression, per the report.
Depictions of mental health conditions like depression that are accurate and sensitive avoid using the condition for humor or portraying unnecessary stigma, but do portray help-seeking for the condition, according to the report.
Accurate and sensitive depictions of depression could also include the fact that many people hide it well, even if they are struggling, says Tess Brigham, a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Depression can appear differently in each person — it could make people want to hide from others or try to hide their emotions behind sarcasm, for example. “It’s important people realize depression takes on many forms,” she says.
They could also help people recognize potential symptoms in themselves and seek professional help for it. “Mental illness is very isolating and you can feel really alone and seeing an actor or a character that reminds you of you can make you feel less alone.” says Brigham.
But according to the report, many of the depictions that do exist stigmatize and trivialize mental health conditions like depression. Forty-seven percent of movie characters and 38 percent of TV characters with mental health conditions were portrayed in the context of disparagement. Twenty-two percent of movie characters and 50 percent of TV characters were depicted in the context of humor.
Forty-six percent of characters with mental health conditions were depicted as violent or dangerous, per the report — a harmful stereotype that can worsen self-esteem, prevent people from seeking mental health help, keep people from sticking to their medication, and impede the overall management of their condition, according to research published in CNS Drugs.
That’s why accurate and sensitive portrayals of people with depression are so important. Here are six movies, TV series, and books that do the topic justice, according to Bowker and Brigham.
1. ‘Cake’
In the film Cake, Claire Simmons (Jennifer Aniston) lives with chronic pain after surviving a car accident that kills her son. She misuses pain medication as a way of coping with her son’s death, her strained marriage, and the suicide of another member of the chronic pain support group she attends.
As Simmons struggles to cope with her life circ*mstances, she holds onto anger as a way to avoid dealing with depressive symptoms, says Brigham. “Anger is a secondary emotion and for Claire, it's easier for her to be angry at everyone and everything than to be sad,” Brigham explains. “If she stops being angry, she'll have to address her depression.”
Traumatic events like car accidents, loss of a loved one, relationship difficulties, drug addiction, and chronic pain are all risk factors for depression, according to Mayo Clinic. Anger and irritability are also key symptoms of depression, Mayo Clinic notes.
Cake,Amazon.com
2. ‘Truths I Never Told You’
In the novel Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer, Beth Walsh — a child psychologist and new mother who struggles with postpartum depression (PPD) — offers to clean the family home after her father is moved into a care facility. While cleaning the home, she discovers a handwritten journal entry in her late mother’s handwriting.
She and her siblings were told that their mother died in a car accident when they were very young. But the journal entry suggests something much different — that their mother was struggling with PPD, and their father wasn’t the loving man they knew him to be.
“This book does an excellent job of modeling that PPD can happen to anyone, even a mental health professional, and it powerfully captures how isolating and lonely the diagnoses can feel,” says Bowker. “It gives insight into how PPD impacts the whole family unit, how others might respond in both helpful or unhelpful ways to someone with this diagnosis, and different outcomes and options for treatment.”
PPD affects an estimated 1 in 8 people shortly after they give birth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Truths I Never Told You,Amazon.com
3. ‘This Way Up’
In the British TV series This Way Up, Áine (Aisling Bea), who was recently discharged from inpatient mental health treatment, tries to resume the life she had as a teacher of English as a second language before her treatment, which she finds is easier said than done.
“This show does a great job of showing how recovery from depression or addiction or anything else is not linear,” Brigham says.
Bea, also an executive producer and writer for the show, wanted to portray that depression can happen even when everything else in someone’s life seems okay, she told Esquire in an interview published in July 2021.
“I wanted to show this time it’s not about the external stuff — what about when the external stuff’s fine, and nothing’s going wrong, and you are where you should be in a way, how do you get through that?” Bea told Esquire. “So that was the MO, for want of a better word. [Áine] loves her job, everything’s going well, but she has mental health issues.”
Áine also sometimes tells people in her life what she thinks they want to hear rather than being forthcoming about the mental health challenges she continues to face, Brigham adds. As mentioned earlier, some people with depression may try to conceal their symptoms from others.
This Way Up,Hulu
4. ‘The Authenticity Project’
In the novel The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley, Julian Jessop, a lonely artist who feels that most people aren’t really honest or authentic with each other, decides to write about his life in a journal and leave the journal in a cafe. He does this in hopes that people will write honestly about their lives in the journal.
The owner of the cafe, Monica, writes her own entry and leaves the journal in a wine bar across from the cafe. They, along with several other people, find and write in the journal about issues like postpartum depression, addiction, and loss, and eventually connect in person at the cafe.
“The main thread that runs across all the characters battling depression, regardless of their age, is how isolated and disconnected each individual feels,” says Bowker. Social withdrawal is a common symptom of depression, per Mayo Clinic, and loneliness is a risk factor for depression.
The Authenticity Project,Amazon.com
5. ‘Garden State’
Some people with depression experience emotional numbness, including struggling actor Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) in the film Garden State, Bowker says.
After being estranged from his family for 10 years, Andrew receives a message from his father that Andrew’s mother died and he needs to return home for her funeral. Andrew attends his mother’s funeral, but doesn’t cry.
“There is also an impactful scene where everyone is moving quickly around him and he is just standing still as a bystander, not participating in his own life,” Bowker says. “Depression is not always an obvious large display of emotions or tears, and sometimes someone might seem fine but really be hurting inside.”
Upon returning home, Andrew reconnects with some friends from his past. Later in the film, it’s revealed that Andrew has been taking lithium and other mood stabilizers, as well as antidepressants, since age 10. (His father, who’s also his psychiatrist, prescribed him these medicines.)
Andrew decides to come off the medication to see if that might help him reconnect with his emotions. Antidepressants are sometimes linked to emotional numbness among people with depression — some antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can cause emotional blunting, or dulled emotions, as a side effect.
Braff, also the director and writer of the film, had said his own experiences with depression influenced how he wrote the script. “I knew I was battling something,” Braff told The Independent in an interview published in March 2023. “That's what writing Garden State was about. I wasn't as extreme as Andy, but I was certainly battling my own demons.”
Garden State,Apple TV+
6. ‘Little Miss Sunshine’
The film Little Miss Sunshine offers a fairly accurate depiction of how depression can affect a whole family, says Bowker.
It’s centered around the members of the Hoover family, some of whom are struggling with issues like depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Olive (Abigail Breslin), the youngest member of the Hoover family, learns that she’s qualified for the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant and convinces her family to take a road trip from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Redondo Beach, California, so she can compete.
During the trip, the family encounters several setbacks and needs to lean on one another for support. “We also see how connecting and working together as a family, reducing the isolating nature of depression, is ultimately very healing for everyone,” says Bowker.
Depression may run in families — it’s more common in people who have blood relatives with the condition, according to Mayo Clinic.
Little Miss Sunshine,Amazon.com
