HALF-DROWNED HOUND 
How Yellowjackets Fails its Psychiatrized Viewers
Note: This essay contains spoilers for Yellowjackets.
Before I begin, I want this to be clear: I do love Yellowjackets. I find it entertaining; it's brought me closer to several friends, new and old; and some of the characters are among my favorites of all time. In fact, I'd say it's hovering around #2 in my favorite TV shows.
With that out of the way, here's the naked truth: it's not a well-written show- not entirely, anyway. A better word, perhaps, is that it's thoughtless. Despite the show's moving and realistic portrayal of mental illness and psychological trauma itself, there's a jarring contradiction in how the psychiatric aspects are handled. This would be forgivable, though irritating, if it were just one or two insignificant inaccuracies. Unfortunately, psychiatry is a major plot point in season two, making some parts nearly unwatchable for people who have experience with the industry- most consequentially, the patients ourselves.
The first thing that rubbed me the wrong way, though, was midway through the first season. For those of you who don't watch and are only reading this because you've got nothing better to do, the character Lottie Matthews is- rather, was- on antipsychotic medication. Naturally, when she and the rest of the girls crash-land in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, she eventually runs out. At this point, she starts experiencing delusions again, speaking of an 'It' that wants blood, among other erratic behaviors.
Here's the thing: antipsychotics are heavy-duty medications, and tapering to avoid withdrawal symptoms may take years, even with the help of a psychologist. Lottie stopped cold turkey. Not only did she not experience any emotional disturbances besides those directly related to her reemerging psychosis, the writers couldn't be bothered to throw in one-off lines referring to any one of the physical symptoms that you can find listed a Google search away. I'll admit that I can be a pedantic person, and this perhaps comes off as my pedantry showing through, but if the writers are going to make Lottie's psychosis and her being on antipsychotics a plot point, then they should probably try to actually sell it instead of flinging it in haphazardly.
While there are other moments that take me out of the zone in season one- namely Sammy, a Black child's, experience with psychiatric treatment under a white woman- some things are better suited for other articles written by other people. Season two, however, features aspects that aren't directly tied to sociopolitical matters- they're just unapologetically wrong.
Much of season two revolves around Natalie, a child abuse survivor and addict who, before being interrupted (kidnapped, to be more specific) by present-day Lottie's followers, was going to commit suicide. She's brought to a mental wellness commune Lottie had started somewhere in the two and a half decades since they last saw each other, and initially, it's fine! Sure, some of Lottie's methods are bizarre, and she's two steps away from becoming a cult leader, but these women used to partake in ritual cannibalism, so it's pretty easy to forgive her for something that's so tame in comparison.
Things go downhill fast when the writers, through Lottie, start to bring in extant treatments, namely eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR). Without getting too detailed, EMDR is a technique used to help trauma survivors process and integrate their traumatic memories so they're no longer triggering. While Lottie's use of it on Natalie does center around a traumatic memory, that's where the accuracy ends and the neurological impossibility begins. Once again, a quick Google search tears a hole in the entire scene: performing EMDR on Natalie wouldn't have caused her to remember details that would solve the mystery of her best friend and on-and-off lover Travis' death, because EMDR on its own physically cannot do that. Psychiatry, an industry that can and is used to harm real living people- traumatized people, as all these women are- is being aestheticized. Even if you refuse to engage in criticism of the industry itself, it should at least strike you as wrong to aestheticize the lived reality of the people one is trying to represent.
It almost seems petty to criticize it for Natalie's response- an deep but calm bout of grief and dread, which quickly gives way to optimism, even though by any logic she would be sent into an even darker place by trying and failing to process the traumatic memories while already unstable- when the other things that stick out are far more egregious and certainly more obvious, but, as they say, rule of three. If the show weren't about trauma with psychiatry as a major part of season two, I would probably just complain about it on Tumblr, but unfortunately for me, that's not the case. Still, it's probably the least unrealistic of these and is required to be like that for the plot (as Natalie needs to convince the other women to let Lottie help them), so I'm forced to forgive them. But it is inaccuracy, and piled on top of the other things, it certainly doesn't help the writers' case.
A little inaccuracy in throwaway lines of something largely unrelated to trauma and psychiatry would be excusable- they're certainly the norm- but mistakes this big are evocative of stories written for a high school creative writing class. The fact that the writers of Yellowjackets, who are professional screenwriters boasting Emmy noms, are using these facets of psychiatry (and thus, mental illness and trauma) as major plot points despite being completely unrealistic is, to say the least, disappointing, considering that the show itself is undeniably about trauma.
And look, I know what you're thinking: why does it matter? Why does some sloppy writing need to be called out when it's not even demonizing mentally ill people? The answer is this: it abstracts us out of their reality. Mentally ill people exist in Yellowjackets- almost exclusively, actually; half the story is about how the trauma of their senior year still crushes the characters now. Yet, our real experiences are given less than the bare minimum effort in their portrayal, which sends the message that we don't exist in real life, that we'll never watch their show, never have a problem with the alienation inherent to such shameless inaccuracy. Fostering the audience's suspension of disbelief is a crucial part of good storytelling, but in Yellowjackets, this is only afforded to those who have no experiences with psychiatry, with the enjoyment and approval of those who do implicitly deemed worthless. We do not exist to them.
The creators of Yellowjackets have created a work of fiction that cares more about its mentally ill characters than living, breathing mentally ill people. It's exhausting, it's alienating, and it's a pattern that needs to end.