'Split' Runs Into More Criticism Over Portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Split has been the No. 1 movie in the country for two weeks, but while audiences may be enjoying M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, the critics are increasingly going after it. Split is a psychological horror film about a character with dissociative identity disorder (DID, or as it was previously known, “multiple identity disorder”).
Some people feel Split unfairly perpetuates myths about DID. Award-winning psychologist and therapist Michelle Stevens is one of those people. Her soon-to-be-published book, Scared Selfless, is about Stevens’s experience as a child as the sex slave of her mother’s boyfriend. After her traumatic experience, she developed multiple personalities.
In an open letter to Shyamalan published in the Hollywood Reporter, Stevens criticized the director for his movie. “I have lived for years with the stigma created by movies such as yours,” she wrote. “Despite being a successful doctor who runs a charity for adult survivors of child abuse, I live with constant anxiety that people will learn of my diagnosis.”
Dr. Garrett Marie Deckel is a DID specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “[Split is] going to upset and potentially exacerbate symptoms in thousands of people who are already suffering,” she told CNN. Cathy Kezelman, a leading Australian mental health expert, has also weighed in. “Research shows … people with this diagnosis are no more likely to be violent offenders than the rest of the population,” she told SBS. “So for people to experience it, and see a movie about their diagnosis, is very traumatizing.”
The Verge writer Charles Bramesco summarized it succinctly. “It’s hard to imagine a more squarely on-the-nose example of demonizing mental illness than portraying a mentally ill man as a literal demon,” he wrote as part of critique of the film.
M. Night Shyamalan discussed the controversy with Yahoo Movies. “We’ve had no issues from people that have seen the finished film, just zero,” he said. “It’s all taken in the right light, and they feel moved and honored by the way [James McAvoy] portrays the different [personalities].”
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