"House, M.D." & The Stigma of Mental Illness, Part Three

(In response to someone's comment that they'd always thought mental hospitals were terrifying places.)

Most people don't know about mental hospitals. (Personally, I refer to them as "loony bins".) They are usually part of a larger hospital, and as clean and shiny as PPTH.















"Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital "

However, the violent wards are pretty frightening...I've never stayed in one, but I've gone to AA meetings in them. It would be highly inappropriate and unrealistic for House to be in a high-security locked ward, even though he is an addict.

During my first commitment many years ago, there was a poor fellow detoxing from benzodiazopines (probably Xanax). He was shaking all over, constantly. And there was a young woman who had the mental age of six, although she was 35, and she was there because they were changing her medication and needed to do it in a safe environment. In real life, that would be the sort of situation House would be in...supervised withdrawal with psychiatric help.

There are lousier state hospitals, but even those are nothing like prisons. In the Season Five episode "The Social Contract," House went with Wilson to a New York hospital so Wilson could see his long-lost schizophrenic brother. I promise you, I have NEVER seen a waiting room like that in a hospital...dark green, dimly lit, and empty. It made no sense, except dramatically. Way to go, "House, M.D.", make viewers think that hospitals are the end of the world. Graystone Hospital, where they are filming the first episode of Season Six, looks like Frankenstein's Castle.
















Graystone Hospital, closed in the 1990s. Now standing in for "Mayfield Hospital".


I wish the writers felt a greater responsibility to be realistic--or at least as realistic as television allows.