Pop Culture Ratings

As promised, now that we've outlined social justice 101 and the mental health profession 101, we'll now explore popular media, and how effectively and accurately it portrays the mental health profession, as well as to what degree it promotes social justice, as opposed to reifying existing systems of oppression.

In the interest of transparency and accountability, below are the criteria that will be used to measure to what degree each popular medium promotes social justice and reasonably portrays the mental health profession.

Let's start with the criteria for the social justice grade. Each popular medium will be assessed to see if it passes the (original)

Bechdel Test
Which requires that a film, television series, book, etc. has

1. At least 2 women (preferably with names)
2. Who have at least 1 conversation
3. About something other than a man or men. 

 Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian outlines and discusses the test.

Mental Health Profession 101

Soooo...this next post was supposed to be about the intersection of social justice, pop culture, and the mental health profession. And then, I remembered that I hadn't yet posted my mental health profession 101 article. Whoops! My bad. Thus, here's a (not so) brief overview of some of the basic concepts of the mental health profession.*

For starters, what do we mean when we say "mental health?" 
Psychological wellness, or mental health: 

• Can be understood as a state of well-being wherein the individual can 
• realize her/his own abilities
• cope with the typical stresses of everyday life, 
• work productively and fruitfully, and 
• make a contribution to her/his community (World Health Organization, 2013)