Mariah Romero

It’s a dark stormy night, four friends are sitting in the living room. Suddenly lighting

struck and caused for the lights to go out in the house. The girls are beyond freaked out and the

sound of the loud thunder and the strikes of lighting causes them to huddle together in fear. Then

with a big gust of wind, opens the back door. At this moment in time, the girls are beyond

freaking out. All of sudden the lights come back on and no sooner then the lights come on, all the

girl’s phones began to ring. They all pull out their phones and looked at it, with pure horror they

knew who it was, the text read “Next time you’ll be left faceless –A.” A is back to haunt them

and they are not prepared for it.

Pretty Little Liars focuses on four friends who are stalked and tormented by what was in

the beginning an unknown person. Within the show many of the characters showed signs of

having different mental illnesses. From Spencer having a mental breakdown from abusing

medication to Mona biggest mental breakdown. Mona from Pretty Little Liars season 3 can be

seen as being Narcissistic or having a personality disorder. Since her reveal as “A”, Mona has

been locked away at Radley the mental hospital.

Over the last 50 years, there has been a dramatic change in how people look and

treatment people with a mental illness. With more technology available to research those with a

mental illness, we can see how that person’s brain works and how we can improve their living. I

plan to dig deeper into mental illness treatments and awareness. Treatments has also greatly

improved as well; we went from believing everyone that was mentally ill needed to be locked up

in a “crazy” house or treated as they were criminals or less than human to having medication that

help with the symptoms so that a person was function “normally” as possible in society. Pretty

Little Liars does not really hit on the treatments of mental illnesses but it does show different

characters having some type of mental illness. It just brings awareness that just because someone

seems like they are normal, they could have a mental illness that they have been trying to hide

from everyone and being left untreated can lead to that person having a manic episode.

Before I began my research on mental illness treatment/ awareness and the connection

that Pretty Little Liars has with it. My position on this topic as a viewer of this show is that in our

society, we tend to jump to conclusions about people with a mental illness. I can understand

when Hannah became very angry when her best friend Mona was locked up in Radley, the

mental hospital and everyone kept calling Mona crazy. Mona although snapped and tried to hurt

Hannah and the rest of the girls, Hannah still believe in that Mona just need help and that she

was not crazy; like a lot in our society we tend to say right off the bat that someone with a mental

illness has to be crazy when in reality they may just need some help with dealing with their

symptoms. My interest in this topic comes from my love of the show and also I have an interest

in learning more about mental illnesses. This paper will dig deeper into more about the treatment

for people with a mental illness and how Pretty Little Liars characters like Mona often show

them going through periods of having mental illness or they are actually mentally ill.