The month of May was Mental Health Awareness Month. As viewers of the ABC daytime soap opera, General Hospital and observing the storylines airing, we can’t help but wonder if the show is particularly trying to bring awareness to Mental Health. Thumbs up, if so!
Maurice Benard Is An Advocate For Mental Health
One of GH’s lead actors, Maurice Benard (Sonny Corinthos) is an advocate for Mental Health. He has made it his mission to bring awareness to it as he himself suffers from bipolar disorders. Currently, Benard has a YouTube weekly series, State of Mind aimed to bring awareness as well. With both Elizabeth Webber (Rebecca Herbst) and Marshall Ashford (Robert Gossett) having mental health storylines at the same time on the show, we were wondering if this was an aim by the show to bring some form of awareness to mental health issues.
Elizabeth as we know is suffering from DID. Dissociative identity disorder is a mental health condition. When a person is diagnosed with this disorder, it means that they have multiple, distinct personalities. The various identities control a person’s behavior at different times. The condition can cause memory loss, delusions or depression. In scenes, we have seen where Elizabeth’s action depicts her identity for the moment.
On the other hand, Marshall finally revealed that he has Schizophrenia to Curtis (Donnell Turner), his son. It was quite a touching moment to watch. It is a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. This disease may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling. People with schizophrenia require lifelong treatment.
Soaps Have Historically Tried To Bring Awareness to Real-Life Illnesses
Often soap operas do try their best to bring awareness to real-life sicknesses, disorders, drug abuses and issues. Soaps in the past have brought awareness to different types of cancers, Alzheimer’s and so much more. The impact of bringing awareness to things that affect us in real-life can be great.
It could also help in minimizing the negative effects that it has on this current generation. We greatly appreciate General Hospital for raising awareness to bipolar disorders, DID, Schizophrenia and mental health related issues.
Be sure to catch up on everything happening with GH right now. Come back here often for General Hospital spoilers, news, and updates.
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Bringing mental health awareness to GH is nothing new. They did this years ago when Sonny was diagnosed as Bi-Polar. Soaps like GH and AMC have always been great about bringing awareness to different social issues and mental illness.