From Screen to Clinic and Back: A Bibliometric and Interpretive Analysis of Medical Discourse on Mental Health in Film and Screen Media (2010–2025)

Cinematic representations of mental health operate at the intersection of science, culture and visual meaning, while medical academic discourse plays an important role in shaping how such representations are conceptualized. This study examines how the PubMed-indexed literature (2010–2025) engages with mental health in relation to narrative film and related screen media, combining bibliometric mapping with interpretive analysis. Through a structured PubMed query and VOSviewer co-occurrence analysis, this study identifies 5292 unique terms, of which 530 meet the minimum frequency threshold. Comparison between low- and high-frequency maps reveals a shift from lexical diversity to a consolidated biomedical core centered on classification, diagnosis and measurable affect. Six clusters are identified (neuro-affective, educational stigma, media–behavioral, neuropharmacological–technological, perceptual–emotional and pandemic-related), which together structure the field’s dominant semantic orientations. The findings indicate three main patterns: the predominance of standardized biomedical language, the limited visibility of intersectional categories (e.g., gender, race, identity) at the level of indexed metadata, and a gap between visual processes and narrative meaning. While individual studies often engage with cinematic complexity, this dimension is only partially reflected in the dominant lexical structure. Building on these results, a cluster-informed conceptual framework for film-based medical education is proposed, in which narrative film can support complementary forms of clinical, social and interpretive learning. This study contributes to the field of Medical Humanities by demonstrating that medical discourse not only reflects but also structures the visibility of mental health in relation to screen media, while highlighting the need for more integrated approaches that connect biomedical knowledge with narrative and cultural understanding.