Do you think the writers heavily failed lottie matthews and did a horrible portrayal of her mental health issues?
It’s complicated. I don’t think they failed completely, but there are definitely some harmful aspects in the way they chose to portray a character like Lottie. Going to go into a very long rant here as always.
The show walks a very thin line depicting a character canonically diagnosed with schizophrenia as leading acts of violence and starting a cult (the show is also walking a very thin line portraying this ‘Wilderness’ spirituality, of which many aspects have been borrowed from Indigenous belief systems, as a catalyst for violence). Schizophrenia has been found to be the most stigmatized mental health disorder, and it’s very common to find media depictions that reinforce this stigma, despite people with schizophrenia being more at risk of being victims of violence than the perpetrators of it. It’s definitely more common to find a portrayal of a character with schizophrenia as violent than non-violent, and Yellowjackets is a part of that problem. However, I do still see value in some of YJ’s more accurate depictions of schizophrenia, and I’ve heard many people who experience psychosis do relate to her character and the way her psychosis is shown (especially in the first season). People being able to relate to Lottie’s mental health is so valuable!
Some accurate aspects of Lottie’s depiction:
•Her psychosis is contextual and stress-dependent. It’s exacerbated by a high-stress environment. She’s starving and sleep-deprived. She experiences many traumatic events in a very short amount of time. She’s not shown to be inherently violent due to her psychosis, but when her environment becomes increasingly violent and when her circumstances begin demanding violence to survive, that’s when her psychosis shifts. I actually think the tragedy of her character (particularly in the way her delusions are validated and used for survival by the others to the point of her destruction) is really interesting, unique, and well-done.
•Her amount of insight oscillates. Sometimes she has moments of clarity in which she recognizes her mental illness, sometimes she believes completely that the Wilderness is real and she’s not able to be “snapped out of it.” And when she is in active psychosis, she really does believe in what she’s saying and doing, it’s not as simple as telling her it’s not real.
•Stigma against schizophrenia, and the effects of this stigma on those who are diagnosed with it, are pretty accurately depicted in the show. The other characters call her “crazy,” make jokes about her not being on her meds and being locked in the looney bin, they feed her delusions when they need hope and use her as a scapegoat for all of their violence when they don’t need her anymore. When they first crash in the wilderness, Lottie hides her medication, doesn’t tell anyone about her hallucinations, and appears deeply ashamed whenever she’s unable to hide her psychosis from those around her. Lottie knows the stigma surrounding the condition she’s been diagnosed with, knows she can’t share it with anyone without facing this stigma, and feels deeply ashamed of it. And she feels deeply alone and alienated from others due to having this secret about herself. Unfortunately accurate.
•The show manages to never slip into complete cartoonish villain category with Lottie, there’s always a sympathetic side to her character and there’s nuance in her intentions. It’s made clear that Lottie’s intentions/motivations will always be a bit different from the other characters when she is experiencing active psychosis.
•The “I will be unwell” scene is the most sympathetic portrayal of Lottie I’ve seen so far in the show and I want more of that nuance!
And then…there are harmful aspects, which I’ll do my best to list here:
•I think, unfortunately, the main motivation behind having Lottie canonically be diagnosed with schizophrenia has always been to keep the show’s core mystery alive (is it rational or supernatural?) rather than out of a genuine desire to provide representation for an underrepresented/misrepresented mental health disorder. Lottie’s schizophrenia often exists as a narrative device more than anything else. It provides a rational explanation for something that would otherwise be unequivocally supernatural.
•Doomcoming. I really wish they hadn’t had a character with schizophrenia also lead a sexual assault (which is implied to be partially based on this psychosis as well). It brings up uncomfortable and problematic discussions/questions about the role of Lottie’s psychosis in the SA and the implications of that. Discussions about Lottie’s character become land mines because of this. Trying to talk about her character in a nuanced, non-villainizing way becomes difficult to do without minimizing her canonical role as a perpetrator of SA. I have seen Doomcoming used both to justify demonizing statements about Lottie’s mental illness and, conversely, Lottie’s psychosis being used to soften or explain away what happens during Doomcoming. It’s messy, and it’s why I advocate for not seeing Doomcoming as a perfectly accurate 1:1 with reality depiction of either psychosis or sexual assault. It functions more as symbolic horror than as an accurate or responsible representation of either.
•Spirituality and psychosis are far too often mixed and used as interchangeable in this show, which is harmful both for the kind of spirituality being portrayed and for schizophrenia.
•The show’s portrayal of ECT is very inaccurate. In my teenage years, I drove my mother to a clinic to receive ECT every week, and I gained a fair amount of knowledge on this treatment which is often misunderstood (and based on a version of it that existed decades ago and has completely evolved since). And when I saw the way it was shown in Yellowjackets with Lottie, I was rolling my eyes to say the least. ECT is not performed while the person is conscious (as is shown in YJ), they are under anesthesia and given a muscle relaxant. It is not painful. ECT is used only for severe mental health conditions when all other common treatments haven’t worked, but it requires informed consent from the person receiving it, with rare exceptions for those whose mental illness is severe enough that they are not able to give their consent and their illness has become life-threatening (refusal to eat, suicide attempts). The show portrays ECT as something purely coercive, torturous, and harmful, when it actually has strong empirical evidence in support of it and has significantly helped people when all other common treatments have failed. It saved my mother’s life and I hope more people can recognize the modern version of it (which existed in the 90s as well). It absolutely has its downsides (which I witnessed) but I wish the show had done more research before spreading inaccuracies about it.
And I do see the consequences of this stigma in fandom spaces. Lottie is often solely blamed or focused on as the perpetrator during Doomcoming (the rest of them equally participated and are also at fault), Lottie is portrayed as distinctly scarier, more evil, more manipulative/power-hungry by the same people who love characters like Shauna and Misty, whose actions are equally, if not more, violent throughout the series. I’m not saying you have to like any of them or forgive their actions (definitely don’t forgive their actions!), but if you’re going to go on tangents about how evil Lottie is while defending Shauna with your life, I’m going to be raising an eyebrow at you!
I really do believe this kind of disproportionate behavior is rooted in subconscious stigma against schizophrenia (and racism!). But if you try to argue this, the response is often, “They’re all mentally ill!” But that response ignores important distinctions. Schizophrenia is very distinct from the conditions other characters are depicted as struggling with, such as PTSD, depression, dissociation, or substance use disorders, and it carries a severe stigma based on fear, misinformation, and moral panic that other mental health conditions do not. Treating these conditions as interchangeable reinforces this stigma.
The showrunners themselves have said, “We don’t see Lottie as a villain, we don’t see any of our characters as villains… her struggles with her mental illness are not making her better or worse than anybody else on our show, it’s just that her circumstances are different.” Lottie is still at fault for her actions, her actions cannot be excused by her mental illness, her actions are not entirely rooted in her mental illness, but it’s still important to have the nuance of acknowledging that her circumstances are always going to be different than those of the other characters.
Of course I’m not an expert on any of this! If I got anything wrong or missed something please feel free to comment!
