EW: Some of those praiseworthy works you mentioned like A Beautiful Mind, like The Hours, what do they do well in changing positively the stereotypes and dialogues surrounding mental health issues?
Fitzpatrick: Well, you know, a lot of those companies - we're in a dialogue right now with the House television program. We've had ongoing conversations over the years with CBS on some of their productions. We'll work with filmmakers who have had their films on Cinemax and HBO. We're hopeful now that when people do films that have something to do with mental illness, they reach out to our organization - not for script approval, but just to get a sense of "are we getting it right?"
There's a predominant number of people in this country that have depression. It's not uncommon to be at a gathering and say you're working in mental health, have people come up to you, and say, "my brother, my sister, my father, my neighbor..."
EW: Sure.
Fitzpatrick: There's a large public dialogue going on now and its largely positive. We understand, frankly - to be blunt - that [Rockstar] makes millions of dollars of profit on [Manhunt 2]. And to stigmatize in the way [that Manhunt 2 does] comes at, really, a social cost.
Non-profit groups like NAMI and state governments, the federal government, end up spending millions of dollars and a lot of time to try and offset the stigma for public education. So what we're saying to the video game industry is, 'we'd like to be a positive partner in the video game industry, and we'd be impressed if you'd consider financing education programs about mental illness."
We have used 70 walks all over the country in major cities - small cities to large cities - we have thousands and thousands of people come out Saturday mornings and walk for mental illness and we have a lot of official companies. Small companies and large companies sponsor those walks. If [Rockstar] could do some socially appropriate things to support public education ... we would say to this company, and the video game industry, that you do have a responsibility to your community. We're not against video games.
EW: Mhmm.
Fitzpatrick: Again, one in four Americans experience mental illness at some point in their lives. I can assure you that many of our members play video games.
EW: Sure. Do video games have any unique capacity - is there anything they can do that you wouldn't find in a film or a novel, for example - to raise awareness?
Fitzpatrick: The demographic for video games is relatively young. In other words, the group of people that play them is relatively young. For example, in our partnership with the House television program (which also attracts a relatively young audience) they ran an add in Seventeen magazine last month.
EW: Oh?
Fitzpatrick: They talked about their support of NAMI to fight the stigmas around mental illness. I think the video game industry, they are reaching out to a younger [demographic]. There really is an opportunity to educate - and I know that's not really their responsibility, again, they're in it to make money...
EW: Hmmm.
Fitzpatrick: ...But there is a fine line between, um - back to that whole issue of not doing harm - there are ways to be edgy. There are ways to create products that sell well to the demographic that [the industry] is trying to reach out to without being insulting, without being so damaging to - you know, a fairly large group of people in America.
Next: Do video games need a "Rain Man?"
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