Split, an M. Night Shyamalan film, stars James McAvoy who plays a murderous villain with 24 different personalities. In the movie, he abducts and torments 3 girls as a result of his condition. Opening at No. 1 this weekend, the movie has generated more than $40 million in domestic sales. However, the Hollywood film has faced a considerable amount of criticism for how it portrays mental illness as it directly impacts those living with it.

In the past, after the release of many movies portraying disorders such as this one, health advocates have spoken out about producers “sensationalizing the diagnosis.” Many real-life patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) have begun self-analyzing their individual diagnosis based on the contents of this movie. Psychiatrist Dr. Garrett Marie Deckel received an unexpected email from a patient with multiple personalities. “There’s a new movie out about a person with DID. It’s a thriller/horror movie,” her patient wrote, referring to M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, “Do I ever scare you?”

Naturally, the specialist responded by writing a strongly worded letter to the people behind the film. “‘You are going to upset and potentially exacerbate symptoms in thousands of people who are already suffering,’ said Deckel, a DID specialist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, immediately after seeing the film” (Nedelman, CNN).

For many others with DID, the goal of therapy is not always to diminish the different parts and retain only one, but to learn to function and work together. Unlike McAvoy’s character in ‘Split,’ according to Deckel, people with DID, who may represent over 1% of Americans, are rarely violent. Research has shown that they are far more likely to hurt themselves than to hurt others.

But movies tend to portray only “the most extreme aspects” of the disorder. Deckel stresses that “this can misrepresent a form of mental illness that is not well understood by the lay public, and even some psychiatrists.” As a result of the movie’s release, people are upset and feeling discriminated against, to say the least.

Previous to the movie-making process, clinical psychologist Bethany Brand, a professor at Towson University, was contacted by Shyamalan, who inquired about DID in hopes of understanding how to correctly portray the main character. “’I understood it was a big gamble,’ Brand said, adding that she was not paid to speak with Shyamalan. ‘I hoped that I would be able to influence the movie’” (Nedelman CNN). After viewing the trailer, Brand immediately contacted Shyamalan, expressing her concerns about the movie he had made. In her email, she asked him, “Do you plan to do anything to help the patients you are portraying as dangerous?”

In response to her remarks, Shyamalan insisted that upon the release of Split, he would be working with Universal Pictures to spread information about DID and promote those living with it. However, as the movie was released, Brand reports that there were “crickets” in terms of what had been done in accordance with Shyamalan’s own words. Hence, the DID community speaks out against this movie, which does not encompass or consider many aspects of DID that are true for real-life DID patients.

To learn more, go to
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/23/health/shyamalan-split-movie-dissociative-identity-disorder/index.html