Grey’s Anatomy Debunking Myths About Mental Illness
Grey’s Anatomy Debunking Myths About Mental Illness & Therapeutic Interventions
The upside of spending more time indoors this winter is that I got to catch up on my two favorite TV shows that I had no time to watch prior to COVID. It’s taken me some time and I am almost caught up on Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19. They are the only shows I watch. Dare I say, my guilty pleasures?
In both shows, I have been incredibly impressed about the strong focus on destigmatizing mental illness and thanks to these shows, society is making so much headway in debunking various mental health myths and misconceptions.
Grey’s Anatomy did such a good job, that in 2019 it became critically acclaimed for the accurate and innovative way that it approaches mental illness, mental health struggles and its interplay with overall health and wellness. It is ingenious how the show so precisely depicts the interconnectedness of the mind and body.
There are a couple of episodes and scenes that I specifically want to address because they are beyond brilliant.
For those of you who haven’t gotten into the show, I will explain why these storylines are so powerful.
Dr. Miranda Bailey (played by Chandra Wilson) starts off as this tough, cold, perfectionist, drill sergeant, head resident, and throughout the seasons we watch her evolution to Chief-of-Surgery. As the storyline progresses, we not only watch her grow in her career but we start to see a softer side, a genuine and conflicted woman. Her battles with racism, sexism, infant loss, divorce, harmful weight stigmas prevalent in the medical system, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), family backstories (including developmental traumas like emotional neglect) and how they all unravelled into a very real complex story. Bailey's character so accurately depicts the detrimental impact of cumulative stress on mind and body as well as the additional ramifications of continuing to ignore and repress that stress.
Smashing Stigmas using TV Shows
Throughout the show, Bailey shatters stigmas and shows the very real life challenges that women in the workforce and life in general tend to face in their rise to success while confronting the difficult task of maintaining a work-life balance.
In one of the more powerful episodes, Bailey thinks she is having a heart attack and doesn’t want her colleagues to know. She checks herself into an ER (in a different hospital to maintain anonymity) and is treated so distastefully by the old-school ER doctor. Unfortunately this kind of neglect and shame stories are commonly shared by women, historically marginalized people and those in bigger bodies. She insists on a stress test, but because she is female and she shared her psych history with OCD, the doctor overlooked the very real possibility that she might actually know what she's talking about and that she is, in fact, having a heart attack. Instead, he insisted that she was having a panic attack due to her lifestyle, emotional health and mental stress. No matter how adamant Bailey was that she was having a heart attack, the doctor continued to shame her and overlook her intuition, denying her request for a cardiac stress test.
Health and Mental Health
It is no secret that when classically trained doctors hear “mental illness” they automatically think “it’s all in your head”- and in this case, Bailey’s doctor ignored his patient's concerns and ordered a psych consult instead of a stress test (which ultimately made Bailey’s condition worse.)
You have a right to advocate for your health
Bailey was belittled as a woman and as someone who has a mental health struggles. She advocated for herself and kept pushing for what she knew was important in her medical care. In an epic dialogue with the doctor, Bailey says;
“I have a big job where I do big life-saving miracle working things, where I lead others so they can do their big life-saving miracle working thing and yes, I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I am not ashamed of that. But it is not my whole story. It is just one piece. And if you continue to look at just that one piece, if you check that mental illness box and refuse to look at anything else, then I’m not going to live long enough to finish the rest of my story.”
Dr. Weber and Dr. Bailey discuss long term mental health planning
The flashbacks in this episode showed her colleague Dr. Richard Weber with Bailey sharing about his own battle with alcoholism and how any chronic condition needs to be supported and managed forever, with no quick fixes. He encourages her to accept help, to accept herself as human and to accept her disease. Although counterintuitive, acceptance can be very healing and cathartic. Weber also de-stigmatized medication use for mental illness and insisted that it is a really important medical intervention to help manage her symptoms and in no way considered a weakness (quite the opposite - it shows strength of character.)
Dr. Bailey and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Bailey’s continuous struggle with OCD is a very accurate portrayal of the anxiety disorder and forces the audience to reevaluate their preconceptions about OCD and other challenges surrounding mental health within the healthcare system. It also shows how once identified and treated, people can live very rich and successful lives with this and other anxiety struggles.
Another challenge that Bailey’s character brought to life is the impact of weight shame and stigma within the healthcare system.
Once discharged from the hospital, Bailey’s lack of proper health guidance led her to extremely dangerous weight loss attempts which ended up causing her to get even sicker. There is not enough education about “health at every size” in medical school and unfortunately its importance is commonly overlooked.
Bailey is far from the only character who deals with challenges. As humans, each person struggles, albeit in different ways- and in this show, there’s an honest depiction that struggling is part of the human experience, as is finding a way in that struggle.
Jo’s abandonment story with Alex
Another incredibly powerful storyline involves Alex leaving Jo unexpectedly, shortly after she finally agreed to trust again and marry him. She came into therapy to discuss the abandonment in her marriage, which unravelled some very important childhood traumas, also involving abandonment, that she had never fully addressed and processed before.
Jo’s EMDR session accessing her core emotions
As Jo attends therapy, the audience is introduced to some of the more current evidence based interventions like EMDR, a treatment developed to help treat trauma related disorders. It was such an accurate depiction of the sensitive and intelligent way trauma healing can be supported in a therapeutic setting. Jo’s character is powerful. Although she suffered in her life, we watch her strength of character develop throughout the show and witness all of her efforts to gain internal resources. She perfectly depicts the way complex trauma survivors can, and do, rise from adversity to do great things.
Grey’s lead role Meredith is shown through all her ups and downs as a woman who experienced a lot of emotional neglect as a child, her resultant trust issues, and the way she deals with lots of different kinds of relationship issues, grief and betrayal. We also see her struggles to accept her need for help as well as the tremendous success she had in therapy.
Owen - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Owen is another powerful depiction of someone who works hard to overcome the pain that haunts him. As he navigates different relationships and his inner conflicts, we watch how his PTSD manifests in different aspects of his life. As a war veteran, Owen struggles to find a new norm in life and in love. This theme is interwoven throughout all the seasons (once Owen joins the cast), and accurately depicts how PTSD might impact different relationships and work issues. The very real challenges that trauma victims face was normalized and destigmatizing through Own’s experiences as well as his interactions with loved ones who each presented their own conflicts as well.
Andrew- Embracing Bipolar
In later seasons, we see Andrew's concern for his father who has bipolar and how him and his sister both dealt with it differently. When his own cumulative stress resulted in a manic episode, Andrew’s resistance to accept his own bipolar diagnosis and need for meds was quite an accurate depiction of mania and bipolar. Once he got the support he needed, he was able to live his life again, continue his training, and ultimately, become a stronger and more empathetic doctor than he might have been had he not gone through his challenges.
“Grey’s” shows the various ways that therapy works both for proactive mental health and for mental illness intervention throughout the entire series.
The main character's backstories show how history helps to inform their present and the guest characters help to develop these stories even further.
Though Grey’s Anatomy help push important boundaries, and break stigmas, since it is a TV show, there are, of course, some missing details such as the ongoing dynamics between therapist and client, what truly happens in the therapy room, what we can realistically expect out of therapy.
Since I get many inquiries about those details, I’ve gone ahead and written some blogs to help clarify some of that and provide some input to help you if you’re looking for insight, tools and next steps.
Join me in this upcoming series as we uncover more about the therapeutic process.
Check out the next few blogs as we dive into more topics such as “what therapy cannot do for you”, “how do I know if therapy is for me?” and more..
If you’re looking for one on one counseling and you’re located in New York, reach out here so we can connect you with one of our staff.
Sending much love your way,
XX
Esther and the Integrative Team