Did you see Crumbs on ABC Thursday night?

This really was the WORST kind of comedy, firstly because it really wasn’t funny but even worse because it is so hurtful and ill-informed.

Suzanne Crumb comes home from a psychiatric hospital, following a “nervous breakdown” in which she tried to run her husband down with her car and attempted suicide, after a divorce and the death of one of their three sons. The show is full of stereotypes, offensive language, and trivialization of serious issues.

She is portrayed as a violent woman who apparently holds her ex-husband at gunpoint, and erupts in a supermarket, knocking down stacks of cans. Schizophrenics and their treatment in hospital are stereotyped, for example when Suzanne is discussing her discharge, she says, “I could go home on Thursday, but the schizophrenics are performing Grease. There’s only two of them, but they do all the parts. I couldn’t miss it.”, whilst the show mocks the role of medication in the treatment with comments such as “There’s not enough lithium on the Eastern seaboard to get her through this”.

We cannot and should not tolerate such negative images of mental illness based on prejudice and ignorance.