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While it’s clear Criminal Minds is fiction and has creative license, media shapes our view of the world meaning inaccuracy on issues like mental health can have damaging effects societally, whether we realize it or not. That’s not to say that the show should not showcase the violence within disorders, but such cases of violence within disorders are a rarer depiction than Criminal Minds indicates.
The original series’ tendency to cast mentally ill characters as violent and dangerous with very few examples of mentally ill people not acting as harmful stereotypes to balance it out, perpetuated the fallacy that most or all people with mental health issues can become serial killers or violent. It reinforces the idea that society must fear anyone who is classed as other or different. But according to a 2020 multicenter study, mentally ill individuals have a much higher risk of becoming victims rather than perpetrators of violence. Proving mental illnesses do not equal criminal behavior in both Criminal Minds and the real world.
Criminal Minds inability to understand the realities of mental health also affects its main characters as it neglects to address and deal with theirs. Agent Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini) goes through a lot mentally during her brief time on the show. In the season one finale, she is shot by murderer Randall Garner (Charles Haid), and Garner writes “RULES” on her walls in her blood in retaliation for the BAU disobeying the rules to his “game.” Greenaway’s subsequent four-month leave of absence to heal, highlights the psychological changes in Greenaway as she becomes more withdrawn from everyone around her.
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Her second incident in which a serial rapist taunts her, and she ends up shooting him dead, sees her eventual departure from the show. Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) blames himself for not seeing the signs of her impending breakdown, and while hindsight is a nice thing, the lack of support Elle received after both incidents, considering she works in a department where analyzing the changes in human behavior, is literally their job, is alarming. It is also the first of many cases in which BAU agents go back into the field too soon after significant trauma.
Additionally, in season 2 episode 22, agents Jennifer Jareau (A.J. Cook) and Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) decide to deem a detective unreliable and mentally unstable because he is showing signs of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as he is obsessive about note-taking. This is incredibly harmful, especially considering that obsessive-compulsive disorder affects 2.5 million adults or 1.2% of the U.S. population, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America. The show’s earlier seasons are a showcase of how societal views have changed over time, but that doesn’t make them any less unfortunate.
You would have expected by season three, the show would have gotten its act together, especially considering Mandy Patinkin, who played Jason Gideon, left the show in season three for his mental health because he was experiencing emotional distress from the dark subject matter. And in some ways, it did. One of the few examples in which mental illness is handled well in the series is with the portrayal of Dr. Reid’s mum who suffers from schizophrenia. The show does well to portray her as more than her disorder. But the majority of improvement towards the crime drama’s portrayal of mental health has only got better with its revival and reboot.
