Empathizing with Enemies: Establishing Good Practices for Patient-Provider Communication at Arkham Asylum

Abstract

Arkham Asylum is the home of some of popular culture's most notorious super villains. The neglect and inadequate care these villains receive mirrors a real world context in which mental illness is surrounded by stigma, misunderstanding, and poor rehabilitation rates. Patients like the Joker present complex mental health narratives. These extreme characters would likely be high profile subjects for real-world researchers. This study explores the niches between the usual action-packed escapades on the surface of Batman stories. By pulling back the curtain over the routine treatment of Arkham Asylum’s patients (also known as inmates), the researcher presents a set of good practices for improving their care through more effective communication. A rich data set of recorded audio interviews from the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum serves as the foundation for this set of good practices tailored to the needs of the fictional facility. Narrative inquiry is used to pull these recommendations from the data. Current real world mental health policies and good practices for patient-provider communication, grounded in existing literature, provide the framework within which the researcher compares the fictional world. Based on the narrative elements found in the data, this study recommends an empathy-driven and preventative approach to treating Gotham’s criminally insane population.