Dr. Eric Bender

I think there are some great scenes.

The knock on that for instance, is that love in the end will cure mental illness.

And that's not actually accurate.

but you take away from it what is accurate and then you can talk about, wait a minute, does it really work that way?

And hopefully you have somebody you can talk to about that, but love is not gonna cure it, but love and connection is really important to getting through life with mental health issues and even without.

So I think you look at things, if it's doing a disservice, that would be saying, for instance, let's show a treatment that's very effective and let's make it look horrific.

I think that does a disservice because then people are like, I don't want to do that.

That sounds horrible.

So I think that can do a disservice.

But if you're starting to show mental health on screen, I think that's a first great step because for so long it was just not something people wanted to see or people were afraid to show.

I think it's great that we can show it more nuanced because I do think it's more interesting for audiences and I think it's better to be accurate.

I think, again, anything that gets the conversation going, great.

However, there's so many complexities to medications and treatments and responses.

I think that people just need to realize that because this medication was great for this person doesn't mean it's going to be excellent for you.

And I do have a lot of patients come and say, oh, I saw this on YouTube or I read this on Reddit and like, okay.

All right, so you read it, what do you think?

And so have a conversation and say, well, we've been over this before.

Sometimes people will come back with saying, I've read this again, I read this again.

Say, well, what are you trying to accomplish?

What do you wanna do?