Mental health jokes – funny, futile or worse?
Guest blogger Jessica Brown asks if jokes about mental health are offensive or funny
On last week's episode of Channel 4's 8 Out of 10 Cats, there were a couple of references to mental illness. As you can guess from the nature of the show, the references were jokes. Guest Johnny Vegas joked that he was mentally ill, and the joke was repeated by another guest a few minutes later. To most people, this will have been funny - but did it upset anyone?
Mental health being used in comedians’ material has been a long-standing debate, along with physical disabilities, illness and anything else that can be deemed offensive. The judgment of a joke being offensive, however, is subjective. What one person takes offence to, another finds funny.
Several comedians have faced media backlash for their offensive jokes, but should we be offended or should we laugh along? For sufferers of mental illness, there will be some days where the subject seems far from funny. In the long run, however, a sense of humour is imperative, especially when it comes to the things that we struggle with.
Making light of a challenging situation is an admirable thing to be able to do. It's easy to see how belittling mental illness can be offensive. Taking mental illness jokes too seriously, however, will only mean missing out on a laugh. A celebrity joking that he's mentally ill on prime-time television doesn't do much to tackle the stigma of mental health, but laughing at our problems is a great coping mechanism - so the joke's on him.
4 Comments
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Vanessa
12 months ago
Sometimes being able to find the humour in a situation (even a dark humour) is one of the ways I have been able to make it through a rough patch. However there is a line between being funny and just plain offensive and the trick I think when it comes to anything of that nature is to find a balance.
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Paul
12 months ago
A good, balanced blog :)
My sense of humour has managed to survive two rounds of depression, but even so, depression itself has never given me much to chuckle about.
I agree that making light of a situation is a good thing. It depends who's doing it, where and when, and how they go about it.
I posted a blog called 'Is there anything funny about depression?' a few months ago and some of the comments showed that actually there are some funny sides to it: http://dippyman.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/is-there-anything-funny-about-depression/
Cheers,
Paul -
Anonymous commenter
12 months ago
I agree with Vanessa. Indeed, when people joke with me and say "Are you mad?" I usually reply, "Yes, and I have a psychiatrist to prove it!" So, by and large, I do not find jokes about mental health to be offensive and, like Vanessa, find black humour actually helpful to lighten up my mind. What I do find offensive are jokes that belittle the seriousness of mental illness, such as cracks that play on the (what I believe is) fallacy that Bipolar Disorder has become a celebrity fashion item.
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Aaron
8 months ago
The other comedian, who made the joke about being mentally ill was Jon Richardson, who was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. So I suppose there were two sides to the coin that night. I'm sure he counted them. ;)
