Scapegoating Mental Illness in the Netflix Show "You"

In the first three seasons, the Netflix series You follows the main character and anti-hero Joe Goldberg who consistently becomes obsessed with various women, and in the process of trying to obtain them he kills many people, the women included. In sum, through the four seasons of the show, Joe murders 18 people. For three seasons the show has had limited explicit mention of mental health-related topics. However, in its most recent season, it opens the proverbial floodgates of misinformation.

The season starts after Joe has escaped being caught for his crimes of the third season and taken residence in England under a false name as an English professor. He quickly befriends multiple elite London locals and eventually, they are killed. Initially, the show is framed as a murder mystery with Joe as the detective. Suddenly in episode seven, as Joe is torturing someone, he realizes he has been hallucinating. The show then attempts to portray Joe’s behavior as the result of a psychotic break.

Joe’s astoundingly fictitious mental illness is used to fill so many plot holes it should have been paid a full writer's salary. The murderer was Joe all along, he had just been dissociating so extremely he had no memory of murdering multiple people and locking up his romantic interest. It is revealed he has been hallucinating a friendship the entire time, portrayed as a well-formed visual hallucination with whom he interacts. There are references to him having multiple personalities as well. It would be impossible to diagnose Joe’s character because both the individual symptoms he experiences and the amalgamation of them are too fake to map onto any mental illness.

It is important to de-mystify hallucination experiences. Specifically the non-shared experience of external stimulus. Around 7 percent of the population reports having visual hallucinations and causes range from general medical, neurological, substance, and psychiatric etiologies. Rates are similar for those experiences of non-shared auditory stimuli. These experiences on their own do not indicate a sign of a mental illness or psychotic break as portrayed in the show.

Separating Fact From Fiction: An Empirical Examination

When it comes to a split personality the show falls in lockstep with the current trends. It is not uncommon for a particular mental health diagnosis to take over public discourse and awareness. In the past few years, this has been dissociative identity disorder. The term DID is likely being overapplied to a variety of sociocultural experiences however in its pure form, DID is defined by the DSM-5 as a disorder where there are two or more distinct personality states with variations in mental and physical functioning leading to significant distress in someone’s life. Often patients present with complex and varied symptoms of other disorders and receive erroneous diagnoses before a DID diagnosis. Research is sparse but we do know that there is some overlap between Joe’s portrayal and the experience of those with DID. Often symptoms are experienced as confusing and frightening, only clarified as a dissociative process later in life. And like the character, patients with DID often report a history of childhood trauma and can develop patterns of high-risk behavior. And lastly, as Joe’s character does, because of the distress, there is a higher proportion of suicidal thoughts in this population.

However, these accuracies pale in comparison to the fallacies and dangerous stereotypes Joe’s character displays. This show follows a long trend of DID, or a conflated and overlapping disorder, being used to justify a main character’s violence. The public perception that mental illness is related to violent behavior remains high. This is especially true for more stigmatized diagnoses including schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Evidence does not support this perception though it is continually fueled by portrayals such as Joe’s character. It is well known that those with serious mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Yet in media, those with mental illness are disproportionately represented as violent and dangerous to others and society. Not only do these portrayals contribute to stigma, prejudice, and discrimination toward those with mental illness they also lead to misinformed policies to address violence in society and deflect discourse from effective prevention strategies such as reducing firearm access.