In the AMC series Breaking Bad, the main protagonist, Walter White, finds out that he has end-stage cancer. At that point, he is a mild-mannered man. He is a husband, a father to a teenage boy with cerebral palsy, and he has another child on the way. He and his wife have difficulties paying the bills, so he works two jobs: as a high school chemistry teacher and a cashier at a car wash. At first glance, they seem to be a very normal family except that Walter (Walt) has a bit of a back story. He just so happens to be a Nobel Prize recipient, for a company that he helped to create before being pushed out, called Grey Matter. Walt, upon his diagnosis, decides to use his chemistry skills and a chance encounter with a past student to cook and distribute meth, and continues to make one bad decision after another, all in the name of providing for his family after he is gone. Each decision that follows drags him further into this underworld but also seems to validate, in his mind, that he has found something that he is really very good at. In the end, those decisions destroy his life, as well as the lives of his family and every single person he encounters. Most people seem to think that this show is a story of greed and corruption. In the following pages, using I.A. Richards’ rhetorical definition that rhetoric is the study of misunderstandings and their remedies, and Erika Lindemann’s definition that rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action, as well as some of my own personal experiences, I intend to show that this is actually a story about serious mental health issues that, with proper help, could have been avoided.

            To explain Walt’s condition and the events that take place, I must tell a bit of his story. The show takes place in Albuquerque, NM, and begins with Walt celebrating his 50^th birthday. His wife, Skyler, organizes a birthday party, which he is late for due to his boss at the car wash holding him longer. He is a very timid man. The show will later flash back to the formation of the company Grey Matter, showing how Walt and a former love of his, who is a third partner in the company, are working out a human chemistry problem. They show that Walt got pushed out of his company after receiving the Nobel Prize while his love interest and other partner get together, get married, and make millions of dollars. Back to the party, his brother-in-law, the loud and boisterous Hank, who happens to be a DEA agent, invites him to go on a meth lab raid that will be taking place later in the week. Walt, bashfully, says he’ll think about it. Walt has been feeling a bit under the weather, so the day after his birthday, he goes to the doctor and finds out that he has Stage III Lung Cancer. Something kind of snaps in him. He decides to keep the news to himself and begins worrying about how his family will survive financially without him. Later in the week, he decides to accompany Hank on the DEA raid and, while the team is entering the house, he sees one of his former students, Jesse Pinkman, climbing out of a window. The next day, Walt looks up Jesse’s address at the school where he works and goes to find him. They, grudgingly, agree to cook meth together so that Walt can make some fast cash. Walt, with his chemistry background, ends up making the purest meth that has ever been produced, and the cartels immediately take notice. From there, Walt and Jesse are in non-stop danger. They are repeatedly faced with situations that put them and their loved ones in danger, but Walt’s a smart guy. With every situation they face, he finds a way to win, often leading to someone’s murder. As the story progresses and Walt keeps winning, he starts to take pleasure in it. He changes. He even takes on an alternate persona, calling himself Heisenberg. By the time the story ends, Walt has destroyed everyone in his life and eventually dies alone after leaving a path of destruction that catches international attention. But it all could have been avoided if anyone had seen the signs and Walt had gotten help. So, let’s discuss some of the diagnoses we could assign to him.

            I will start the list of Walt’s possible diagnoses with betrayal trauma. Betrayal Trauma combines painful events with damage to a person’s trust in someone or an institution important to them (Raypole). It is often caused by betrayal from a parent, but it can also be caused by the betrayal of a romantic partner. We see this with Walt in his dealings with his former partners from Grey Matter and as an early precursor to many of his later conditions. Some of the symptoms of betrayal trauma that we see in Walt are loss of self-esteem and self-worth, numbness, anger, loss of faith in others, depression, and anxiety. The show starts much later in Walt’s life, and these symptoms do not last long as his issues evolve into something much worse, but they are certainly present as his character is introduced. Betrayal trauma can also lead to symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which we will discuss next.

            PTSD comprises four different types of symptoms. These types are re-experiencing, avoidance, negative alterations in mood and cognition, and hyperarousal. Within those four categories are approximately 17 different symptoms. The criterion for diagnosis is that a person must have at least one re-experiencing symptom, three avoidance symptoms, two negative alterations in mood and cognition, and two hyperarousal symptoms for a minimum of one month(Diagnosing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). During the early episodes, before other, more horrendous traits take over, Walt exhibits enough of these symptoms to receive a PTSD diagnosis. The only one not exhibited immediately would be the re-experiencing, but we see enough flashbacks of his younger life throughout the series to know that he does, in fact, have these symptoms as well. In fact, his diagnosis of cancer is enough, without all his past trauma, to cause him to develop many of the symptoms of PTSD. Of course, he does not get the professional help he needs, and so these symptoms go untreated, allowing them to blossom into issues that are far worse, which we will now discuss.

            According to Kohut’s theory of self-psychology, it is evident and understandable how Walt’s traumas and disappointments play a significant role in transforming him into a narcissistic personality (Arshad). Narcissism, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)exhibits traits such as self-entitlement, self-importance, jealousy, grandiosity, aggression, and dishonesty, and can develop as a coping mechanism in response to trauma. People who experience trauma often feel overwhelmed by the emotions and feelings that come with the experience and may develop a sense of detachment from their emotions as a way to cope. (Stockbridge) I believe that NPD is the primary diagnosis that really gets displayed by Walter White as we progress through the series. Narcissistic people are classified into four distinct groups. Group one’s people are grandiose and malignant. They accept their narcissistic behavior and have no desire to change. Group two is different and better than the first in that when they come to know of their behavior, they seek help in trying to change. Group three includes the very abusive types. They don’t accept their abusive behavior and blame others. They lack self-awareness and self-reflection. They show aggression and violence, and there is virtually no hope for change. Group four is emotionally clueless, and they do not understand the way that others see them. Walt gradually sinks into the third category, where he shows high levels of aggression and violence towards others, also showing that there is no hope for a change in his personality (Arshad).

            Though Breaking Bad seems to be a show about tragedy and loss, some good has come from it, as it displays representations of the dangers of denial. In January 2020, a trial began in several Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres that included Breaking Bad in their libraries (Bowlby). Cancer patients, watching the show, were able to witness how denial could spill out into the public and affect the families that support them. They were able to see how destructive this could be. A great example that has been taken from the show is an episode from the third season in which Walt spots a fly in his otherwise clean and sanitized meth lab. Walt shuts down operations and spends the entire episode doing whatever he can to kill it before he will allow the cooking process to begin again. The hunt becomes a metaphor for his irrational fight against death, and the pointlessness of this behavior can be seen as signifying the deficiencies of calculative reason when applied to tragedy and trauma (Bowlby).

            I have basically only focused on the mental health issues that surround our main protagonist, Walter White, but just about every single character in the show has to deal with their own battles. Jesse starts the series as a fairly normal young man, besides his drug problems. Through the things that Walt puts him through, he ends up exhibiting just about every symptom of PTSD there is (Three Major Psychological Problems in AMC’s Breaking Bad). Walt’s wife Skyler, must deal with being verbally abused and basically scared out of her mind. She makes many bad decisions, but makes a conscious effort to get past them and does not exhibit as many of the signs. Walt’s brother-in-law, Hank, shows many of the signs of PTSD due to his work in Juarez, Mexico, and his case is one of the few in the show where his PTSD is actually recognized. Nearly all the cartel figures demonstrate clear signs of sociopathy and psychopathy (Liu). Lastly is Walt’s sister-in-law, Marie. She’s a bit neurotic but not clinically. However, early in the series, she shows signs of depression. She becomes a serial shoplifter and gets caught in an embarrassing fashion. She is the only person in the entire series who seeks professional help, and what do you know? She improves and never has another issue with it.

            I, like many others, have had my share of emotional trauma. I grew up with issues of abandonment that led to future problems in all three of my marriages. I served in the military for ten years with a spotless record. Then I had a terrible tour as a nurse with a Forward Surgical Team in Afghanistan. I came home with emotional and physical traumas that ended my career. I, too, did not run right out and get professional help, and by the time I was forced to seek help, it was too late. My compounded issues put me in a prison cell for nearly a decade. And I am not alone. I have seen far too many examples of good people  “breaking bad” and paying the cost because they either did not recognize the problems that they were having or because the social stigma surrounding them prevented them from getting help.

Breaking Bad is a piece of fiction, and I suppose that if Walt had gotten help for his issues early on, it would have been a boring one. But that was not the case. Despite the masterful camera shots and production, I believe that Breaking Bad was such a big hit because so many can relate. Even less severe mental health problems can make you feel like someone else and tempt you to do things you otherwise would not. Let this show help you by recognizing aspects that may appear in your own life and being quick to address them.

Works Cited

Arshad, Ishwa. Narcissistic Personality Disorder of Walter White: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Series Breaking Bad. 14 September 2023. December 2023. <https://medium.com/@ishwaarshad1/narcissistic-personality-disorder-of-walter-white-a-psychoanalytic-study-of-the-series-breaking-df4f61ad9dc0>.

Bowlby, Ewan. Drugs, Death, Denial and Cancer Care: Using Breaking Bad in the spiritual care of cancer patients. 30 September 2020. December 2023. <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1749602020931009>.

Diagnosing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. 2023. December 2023. <https://nyulangone.org/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/diagnosis>.

Liu, Jason. Breaking Bad: A case study of antisocial personality disorders . Spring 2023. December 2023. <https://hekint.org/2023/04/25/breaking-bad-a-case-study-of-antisocial-personality-disorders/>.

Raypole, Crystal. Why Betrayal Can Cause Trauma and How to Start Healing. 6 July 2023. December 2023. <https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/betrayal-trauma>.

Stockbridge, Ian. The link between trauma and narcissism. 12 May 2023. December 2023. <https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/the-link-between-trauma-and-narcissism#:~:text=How%20does%20trauma%20contribute%20to,as%20a%20way%20to%20cope.>.

Three Major Psychological Problems in AMC’s Breaking Bad. n.d. December 2023. <https://hopecounselingeap.com/three-major-psychological-problems-in-amcs-breaking-bad/>.