There’s nothing funnier than mental illness. Well, except maybe unplanned teenage pregnancy. Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, in case you haven’t heard, has turned her pen to a comedy about a woman, played by Toni Collette, who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Better known as Multiple Personality Disorder, this little-understood condition is one of the most controversial diagnoses in mental health. Those with DID are said to suffer periods of blacking out, during which they manifest at least one separate and distinct personality. At first, patients describe themselves as being unaware of the other personalities, which may have a different accent, temperament, knowledge and talents than the “host” personality (and all others). Many mental health professionals question the existence of DID as we understand it. Many famous criminals, including the Boston Strangler, have claimed to manifest “killer” personalities of which they themselves were unaware, and there is a school of throught that says all DID patients may be, to some extent, “faking it” - often due to the suggestions of a psychiatrist.

Traditionally, DID is explained as the brain’s way of creating an escape during childhood trauma. Most diagnosed sufferers were molested by a parent or close relative. Theoretically, the flexible childhood brain could actually create another “self” in order to escape from the one who is being hurt, and in this way, survive the experience. But, according to some, it’s just a rare condition that has been glamorized in the media, leading many to believe that they have it too. In any case, it’s no laughing matter.

But some of the funniest comedies are based on unfunny things, and I’ll be the first to admit it. So yeah, I’m willing to give this new show a shot. But a guaranteed downside is the anti-Juno backlash, which is already raging - Juno seems to be love-it-or-hate-it, and the haters are especially loud with this one. I’m not sure why - maybe they find the self-aware cuteness particularly upsetting.

I’ve never been one of those people who insists that T.V. and movies need to be realistic. While factual inaccuracies bother me, I’m seldom offended by incorrect and potentially damaging portrayals of people, because hey, it’s fiction. But the trend of using mental illness as entertainment is scary - not because it trivializes the experience of suffering, necessarily, but because it spreads misinformation. For years, a good percentage of the population has believed that DID and schizophrenia are basically interchangeable. We’ve all heard the joke, “if a schizophrenic threatens suicide, is it considered a hostage situation?” Schizophrenics hear voices and see things and are generally in constant, pernicious mental decay - but they don’t have multiple personalities. Not ever. How did this even get started?

I’m going to guess it was in the media. And while Diablo Cody’s new series, The United States of Tara, might do some good in removing the mental illness stigma, it’s still mostly just for laughs.

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