‘It’s like I was out of stories to tell myself that things will be OK.” Episode six of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s third series and Rebecca Bunch is in a psychiatric ward after overdosing on a plane. The animated, wide-eyed Bunch we’ve come to know and love has been hollowed out. She’s empty and ashamed. The only hope is a new diagnosis, which she clings on to as a renewed chance at life.

The episode was praised for its candid and sensitive portrayal of mental illness, specifically the diagnosis process. Rachel Bloom, who stars as Bunch and co-created the show with Aline Brosh McKenna, told Vanity Fair earlier this year that they consulted with a team of doctors to reach the character’s diagnosis: borderline personality disorder.



Bunch’s diagnosis did not mean the show suddenly veered from being a self-aware musical comedy to a show about BPD. Bunch’s life continues: Paula needs her; Nathaniel still wants to have sex with her; and there are hilarious show tunes in need of singing.



Crazy Ex-Girlfriend makes anyone with a mental illness feel less like an outcast. Despite her irrational antics, it is easy to empathise with its central character. Her emotional landscape is clearly a mess. She pinballs from one situation to the next at once contagiously enthusiastic and incredibly lonely.



“We know that, when done well, dramatic portrayals of mental illness – particularly those with large audiences – have the potential to improve attitudes towards those of us with mental health problems and encourage more people to seek help,” says Jenni Regan, senior media adviser at Mind. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend shows how important it is to seek professional advice, and how that is nothing to be ashamed of.

While Crazy Ex-Girlfriend made a roaring impact on the 2017 TV landscape, you cannot talk about mental health and television without referencing the fearless Lady Dynamite. Another female-led comedy, it is arguably the most interesting and surreal show you can watch on Netflix at the moment. It is genre-bending plot shows that life with a mental illness can blur boundaries to create a world where pugs are wise and the past is Technicolored.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maria Bamford in Lady Dynamite. Photograph: Netflix

Co-created by South Park’s Pam Brady and Arrested Development’s Mitchell Hurwitz, the show draws on Maria Bamford’s real-life struggles with mental illness, ranging from her type II bipolar disorder to OCD and intrusive thoughts. Like her on-screen character, Bamford spent time in a psychiatric unit. The stay and the recovery process afterwards were things Bamford was keen to get right in her performance. She told the Guardian: “I felt so ashamed at ‘losing’ my mind that when I felt better, it seemed important to share my story because I had felt alone (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, just among public figures).”



Just like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lady Dynamite shows us that experiencing a mental breakdown does not mean you get to put your life on hold. The world spins on, and your mental wellbeing becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Lady Dynamite admits that mania, and the grand ideas it can inspire, has the possibility to be thrilling but is also wild and treacherous. After most episodes of Lady Dynamite, you are left giddy and spent, as if you have just come off a rollercoaster. It is hard not to agree with Maria’s desire in the show: “I just want a quiet life, with just enough work.”



Another show that tackled an incredibly complicated disorder was Overshadowed (BBC Three), an eight-part series about Imogen, a teenage vlogger whose bright personality slowly erodes at the hands of her anorexia. The show never glamorises eating disorders in the way other on-screen representations have been accused of doing. In part, this is thanks to the fact that Eva O’Connor (who also wrote the play behind the TV show) plays the personification of Imogen’s eating disorder, a seemingly normal girl called “Anna”. We spot Anna in the midst of Imogen’s friends, at the dinner table, behind her in the corridor. Her presence becomes less like a shadow and more like a monster in a school uniform.



For O’Connor, it was vital to show the devastating effects of anorexia: “Having lived with an eating disorder for years (I’m now fully recovered), I wanted to show how eating disorders are not just a cry for attention, or the quest for the perfect bikini body,” she says. “They alienate you from people, they destroy relationships, they strip you of any sense of self. It was also important to me that we sent a strong message of hope. Recovery is possible for everyone.”



A final mention for its brave depiction of depression goes to BoJack Horseman (Netflix). Episode six of the fourth season opens with BoJack’s devastating voiceover: “Piece of shit. Stupid piece of shit. You’re a real stupid piece of shit.” The interior monologue of someone in crisis. We already knew that BoJack was plagued by self-loathing but we had never quite witnessed the relentlessness of that self-hatred. It is intrusive, persuasive, all-encompassing. In BoJack’s mind, he is stunted and stuck in his dysfunctional upbringing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bojack Horseman. Photograph: Netflix

This year’s TV offerings have been confessional, helpful and sensitive in their portrayal of mental illnesses. Characters were not mere stereotypes, they were whole, even when their mental landscapes were fragmented. They had a life outside of their mental health issues. These portrayals also told us that help is available. As Dagmar tells Maria at bowl-a-roke in Lady Dynamite: “The more you try and ignore a problem the bigger it gets.”

Hopefully these fearless TV representations will mean the end of mental illness as mere plot point. Conditions are not handy tools to explain a character’s decision-making. They are hellish, they are real, they are complex and they are not always the whole story.

