Bat Therapy: Mental Health through the Lens of Comics and Film

Superpower counterparts, a hero and a villain. One wishes their parents still alive while the other wanted them dead all along. Meanwhile, Batman takes a tortured path of loneliness in his struggle to stay at arm’s length from other people.

What do you do when your options are a lifetime (or more) of prison or a few years off your sentence through a dangerous mission and a bomb in your skull? Oh wait, just kidding, you may not even have a choice.

Bruce Wayne makes a pact to be fearless. But what are the consequences of trying to rid our minds of fear? See how Batman’s striving for control and perfection take him down a winding path in this poetic story.

Fear is a driving force in Batman Begins, each character using it to obtain their version of justice. Carmine Falcone, Scarecrow, and Ra’s al Ghul aim to create fear in others for vengeance and retaliation. With the support of his family and friends, Bruce Wayne learns to use his fear as a guide to find compassion and help Gotham grow. Bonus: This movie contains Dr. Brown’s favorite mental health quote!

Villains. Are they born bad, or do we shape them into what they become? This episode explores the dangers of self-fulfilling prophecies by breaking down how the cruelty of societal expectations may have influenced Waylon Jones to match his insides with his scaley exterior, becoming the supervillain Killer Croc.

In this episode, we breakdown Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film. We take a focused look at how this different approach to Batman lore impacts the motivations and moral codes of Batman and the Joker.

In The Killing Joke storyline, Joker wreaks havoc on Commissioner Gordon’s life in an attempt to show that the Joker is not alone – every person has the capacity to reject all reason and rationality. Yet Gordon does not accept Joker’s invitation to use “madness [as] the emergency exit”, instead finding a way to stay true to his beliefs and refusing to avoid his own pain by inflicting it on others.

Wanda Maximoff is a character riddled with grief while also having nearly unimaginable (and untrained) power and abilities. Bat Therapy explores how this creates a complex bereavement process that appears in both WandaVision and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Included is a discussion of the myth of the 5 Stages of Grief.

Living in a world of superheroes isn’t as thrilling as it may sound, especially when you live in Gotham. Listen in as Dr. Brown answers some of Keeden’s most pressing questions: How does someone living in Gotham decide to leave their house? How do you manage the fear of running into a supervillain when that very fear makes you a target for Scarecrow? Despite the high likelihood of an open job market and low cost of living, why would someone live in Gotham?

What does psychology say about what it takes to be the patriarch of the Bat Family? Beneath Alfred Pennyworth's sass and sarcasm lies the glue that holds everything together.