Advocates for the mentally ill say if you use the stereotype of the 'homicidal maniac' or patronize attractions like the 'Psycho Asylum,' who are perpetrating unfair and dangerous stereotypes which stigmatize people with mental illness, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Dr. Dawn Velligan, who is a professor of psychiatry at U.T. Health, says these stereotypes are also wildly inaccurate.
"People with mental health challenges are really no more violent or scary than anybody else," she said.
In fact. statistics bear that out, that a person with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness is far more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than be the perpetrator.
She says using the image of 'crazy' people to stir up scares over Halloween would be like inviting your friends to go into the cancer ward and a hospital and get spooked out by a the 'scary cancer patients.'
"Nobody would ever think of doing that," she said. "People have a lot of compassion to patients with cancer, and the same should apply to people with mental illness."
Dr. Velligan says she is not trying to ruin anybody's fun over Halloween, and she says from zombies to haunted houses, there are a lot of ways to have fun without making fun of people who have a disease.
"I was actually reading something on CNN's web site about the hurricane, and they said it was moving this way and that way and behaving unusually for a hurricane, and they said it was 'schizophrenic'," she said. "I just think that's not appropriate and it offends people and it hurts people."