As we approach Halloween, many individuals will dress up in costumes as an innocent ploy to mock and bully mental health disorders. Although the commercialism of Halloween is not quite as big as Christmas, the costume and industry financially benefits from the general public dressing up as “psychos” and “serial killers” while haunted houses are decorated as “mental health wards.” People living with mental illness are not scary but the way we treat them can be. Unfortunately, these stereotypical portrayals of mental illness are not just found during the Halloween season. The media tends to put mental illness “on display” at all times of the year, particularly when someone with a mental illness has committed a violent crime. This, along with Halloween, perpetuates the idea that a person with a mental illness is violent and aggressive, and leads the general public to become afraid. Haunted attractions, costumes, and fright festivals can be scary and fun but are also stigmatizing actions for individuals with mental health conditions. With one in five Americans experiencing mental health conditions in any given year, it’s more important than ever be spread awareness about the history of the mental health movement and how these traditions are harmful.
As an individual or a community, you can choose to have a fun Halloween without condemning or mocking mental illness. Choose you costumes wisely, avoid attending fright festivals or haunted houses that portray hospitalized settings or prisons, avoid movies and social media posts that stigmatize the mental health community, take time to learn about mental health and stigma and spread awareness about why Halloween should not mock individuals or disorders. “Psycho”, “crazy lunatic”, “mental health patient”, and “prisoner” are not appropriate costumes for Halloween as these names condone a negative image associated with mental health. Individuals with mental health disorders are often labeled according to their diagnosis; these labels overshadow who they are as a person. “The mentally ill” sends a very different message than “people living with a mental illness”. For many of these terms, what you say does matter and dressing up stigmatizing terms with a costume can do more harm than good within our mental health community.
October is National Bullying Prevention Month and as Halloween closes out this important awareness month our society needs to be more mindful of how we dress up in costume as our appearances and mannerisms can be shameful to the mental health community. Shaming a community, mocking a classmate or dressing up as a mental health patient are all forms of bullying. Given the complex and pervasive nature of bullying, dressing up as someone you know for Halloween can qualify as bullying, provided that you’re having fun at that person’s expense. In fact, dressing up as a classmate or a co-worker for Halloween at an attempt to poke fun at them is quite common and can be detrimental to the individual who is mocked.
Bullying is not just seen in classrooms and on the playground but it is also seen in the home, in the workplace and online. 70.4% of school staff have seen bullying, 62% witnessed bullying two or more times in the last month and 41% witness bullying once a week or more. Bullying is highly linked to mental health and self-esteem and can have potential to have chronic negative effects on an individual’s mindset.