Ok, straight off the bat, before anyone starts, yes, professional wrestling is primarily entertainment, and not to be taken too seriously. Though it relies upon serious conflict (mostly) to underpin its many conflicts, in the end there's something inherently ridiculous and lighthearted about talented athletes pretending to hurt each other. But therein lies the problem. Pop culture is insidious, and whether we know it or not, a huge amount of the way we perceive certain issues, be they of race, gender or indeed mental health, are as much (if not more) informed by the silly entertainments we enjoy than by the serious ones. As such, creators have to have a certain awareness about their product. They need to ask themselves, 'will this make things worst, am I spreading damaging assumptions about important things' even when the medium itself is so silly that scrutinising it seems oversensitive. In a poll last year on cagesideseats.com, when asked 'are mentally unstable characters offensive?', 95% of people clicked 'No, it's sports entertainment for a reason.' The professional wrestling industry has dealt with mental health issues in a variety of ways, and most of them are pretty damaging. While it's maybe too much to expect grace and nuance from an industry built around bodyslams, even fans have to agree that these examples are pretty hard to excuse
