Star Trek Next Generation and Mental Illness

I think I've posted on this before, but you should really check out STNG's treatment of mental illness. Particularly the episode "Frame of Mind". STNG manages to be sensitive to abuses in mental health care without joining the fanatic anti-psychiatric bandwagon of certain psychologists and science fiction writers (including the one we dare not speak his name . . . I think you know who I'm talking about). My computer here does not let me copy and paste dialogue, so I can't highlight the excellent aspects of this episode. I think it's significant that STNG is the first series to have a professional counselor on board its ship, and one of the only series to deal realistically with mental illness, through the character of Reginald Barclay. British series have also dealt with mental illness, particularly Blake's 7 and The Prisoner, but have tended to take a somewhat anti-psychiatric bent, not because they are against the mentally ill, but because they were made in an era where psychiatric abuse was more widespread. STNG also dealt with the possibility of new mental illnesses, namely holoaddiction, that is addiction to the virtual reality of the holodeck. I think tomorrow I will deal with that particularly fascinating, though underexplored part, of STNG.