Why are mental health institutions so white? Or is that only in movies?
In: Biology
In what way do you mean? Patient population or staff or both?
To answer the implied question, why are most characters in mental institutions in movies white? The answer is because most actors/actresses are white.
Why are most actors/actresses white? Because of institutional racism. Most big name actors and actresses are second/third generation actors and actresses. Back when their parents got into acting there were many blocks to getting into acting for people who were not white. Now it is very difficult for anyone that is not already “in the industry” to break in because of rules like fines for production companies that hire non-SAG(screen actor’s guild, the Hollywood actor’s union) actors so they just don’t hired non-SAG, meanwhile, you have to have X number of minutes on screen to be eligible to join SAG. This means that production companies tend to keep hiring the same people over and over and then their famous parents pay to get them in enough movies to join SAG.
Tl;dr, 80 years ago Hollywood was openly racist against people of color. Today the barriers to getting into Hollywood are high for everyone that isn’t already “in.” Not many people of color are “in.”
in the old days they were hospitals so white=clean.
in modern days institutions that treat acute mental issues are going to be “hospital-ready” because anything might happen.
but for people who have milder issues there are home-like places that are sanitary but not bleak-white.
Medical buildings were often painted white because if a white surface isn’t sparkling clean (i.e. has blood, vomit, mucus, whatever) on it, it’ll show and they can do something about it. It’s slightly harder to maintain cleanliness on textured or multicolored surfaces.
So when they started to build psychiatric hospitals, at first they built them like any other hospital.
Later, they decided that since there aren’t a ton of body fluids spilling in a psych hospital (on a good day) they could afford to make the environment a little more pleasant.
If you’re doing a hopeful movie where somebody actually gets better from psych treatment (It’s Kind of a Funny Story), you shoot it in a modern setting where there’s color and art and stuff like that. If you want a “psychiatry is torture” story like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you’d probably go with a harsh-white building.
(Or were you talking about the employees? If so, oops.)
The movie industry tends to use mainly white actors. Fortunately, this has been changing recently and directors are hiring more actors of color
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