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Orange: discusses how mental illness is related in Avatar: The Last Airbender

Green: Uncovers how mental illness is displayed in The Queens Gambit

Purple: Compares both shows because they highlight similar trends in how mental health is shown

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“Avatar.” Avatar Wiki, https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar.

DiMartino, Michael Dante, and Bryan Konietzko. “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” 2005, pp. Season 1-Season 3.

Frank, Scott, and Allan Scott. The Queens Gambit , Season 1, episode 1,3,4,6,7, 2020.

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The episodes: Humor as a coping mechanism 

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The episodes: Humor as a coping mechanism 

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Aang uses humor as a coping mechanism to front a positive attitude when, under the surface, he is under constant stress and pressure to perform well and protect the world. In episode 1, "The Boy In the Iceberg", Aang is just coming to after being released from the ice. When he first wakes up, his first words as Avatar are "Will you go penguin sledding with me?" (S1:E1), using a lighthearted and humorous personality to diffuse tension and distract from the fact that he was in as serious situation just moments prior. Aang continued to maintain a false bravado and act goofy when he knew he was just running away from the problems and pressures of being the Avatar.

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Overall, the shows effectively showcase the characters' trauma, expanding on the subject and using it to display the hard emotional challenges that the characters must overcome. Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Queens Gambit use the negative events in the plot lines to demonstrate the implications that poor mental health can have on everyday life and exemplify the stress and anxiety that are influenced by trauma, answering questions that viewers have on the reality of the events portrayed in both shows. The events that lead to the development of mental illness in Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Queens Gambit are real and communicate the effects of such traumatic events on an individual's mental state beautifully.

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The teachings of Aangs nomad heritage as well as his commitment to the beliefs of the Avatar, place meditation and spirituality as core coping mechanisms for Aang. Practicing spirituality gives Aang opportunities to self-reflect and understand his feelings like in the Season 2 Finale, "The Guru/The Crossroads of Destiny". Aang works to unlock his chakras, looking inside of himself to "accept the reality that [bad] things happened"(S2:E18) to him and that he influenced bad things to happen to others. The guru coaching Aang through this process reminded him that working towards self-forgiveness is the only way to achieve inner balance. Aang also seeks guidance from the spiritual world to gain insight into how he should handle his mental and physical challenges in Episode 16, "Sozin's Comet". He connects with his past Avatar personas and seeks advice on how he should defeat the Fire Lord, demonstrating that spirituality is a great strategy that Aang employs when he feels mentally unstable.

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In The Queens Gambit, Beth is interviewed by the press to share her passion for chess and where it came from in Episode 3, "Doubled Pawns". Beth states "Chess can be beautiful. it's an entire world of 64 squares... I feel safe in.. I can control it..dominate it. And its predictable, so if I get hurt I only have myself to blame" (S1:E3). With her confession, Beth reveals that chess is a safe space for her to escape from her internal affairs. For Beth, chess is her life as well as a coping mechanism that she has found and immerses herself in, using it as a distraction from other pressures of reality.

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In the orphanage, the children frequently took tranquilizers to help them sleep, but it led to dependency for many, including Beth. She actually overdoses on the institution's stores in Episode 1, "Openings"; In the last five minutes of the episode, Beth breaks into the medicine cabinet, shoving fistfuls of pills in her coat pockets and mouth, dangerously coming close to death.  After a period of sobriety, a more mature Beth branches out from her past substance abuse and dips back into pills and alcohol; wielding them in front of her to avoid confronting her emotions. Episode 6, "Adjournment", is where Beth is reintroduced to the pills she took in the orphanage and develops an unhealthy mental dependency on them and alcohol through the rest of the episodes.

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The episodes: Celebrity responsibilities 

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The episodes: Celebrity responsibilities 

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Beth Harmon and the characters of Avatar: The Last Airbender both stand in the public eye, holding influence over media and communities. In the Queens Gambit, Beth rises to be a grandmaster, competing in tournaments all over the world throughout the whole show. Her first ever press interview is in Episode 3, and she expands her influence, going on to win the title of Grandmaster in Russia in Episode 7, "End Game", showing her growth in fame from her first interview. Her fame and skill speak volumes for her, attracting attention across the world. This pressure makes its way to Beth's head, obstructing her ability to think clearly in games and influences feelings anxiety and stress.

Aang, his crew, and his enemies in "Avatar: The Last Airbender" are all powerful and influential characters. While Aang's enemies are royalty, his crew rises to high status as they travel the world and gain attention. In Episode 15, "The Ember Island Players," Aang's gang even inspires a play depicting their journey around the world, highlighting their influence on media due to their established status as the Avatar's friends and formidable warriors. This newfound spotlight creates immense pressure for the gang to succeed and defeat the Fire Nation.

On the other hand, Zuko and Azula face a different kind of pressure. As members of the Fire Nation royal family, they must uphold their honor and defeat the Avatar to prove their worth to their father and their nation. This pressure to earn love and attention, especially from their father, drives the teenage siblings to constantly prove themselves and push their limits.

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In both shows, the characters reach out and develop connections with friends and family, securing a safe and positive place to be themselves and seek support. Aang uses his friends as a support system and vice versa; All of them have withstood grief and loss, resonating with the emotions and pain of the others. This understanding is used by the group to help ground each other through points of doubt. For example, in preparation to face the Fire lord in "Nightmares and Dreams", Aang works himself into an anxious state. With reassurance and support from his friends, statements like "'you're ready'...[and].. 'you're the man twinkle toes'" (S3:E9, Sokka, Toph) he is able to get a full night's rest and reset his mentality.

Despite her introverted and isolating personality, Beth forms a few deep connections throughout "The Queen's Gambit" that ultimately help her during her faceoff with the greatest chess player. One of the most moving examples of this is in Episode 7, "End Game," where her friends come together to develop strategies and support her through the stressful events of the competition. In addition to her friends, Beth's adoptive mother, Alma Harmon, also plays a significant role in her life. By Episode 3, Alma is fully involved in Beth's passion for chess and serves as a sort of manager, supporting her in all of her competitions. These relationships demonstrate that having secure relationships to rely on in times of need are beneficial for individuals struggling with emotional challenges.

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At the beginning of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang lies at first about being the Avatar, unable to accept the daunting pressures of the job after Katara and Sokka recounted the majority of what had changed over the 100 years. In episode 3, "The Southern Air Temple" is where Aang discovers all the air nomads are extinct. He loses control of himself and rises to the avatar state, moved by the anger and guilt generated by the belief that if he never ran away, he could've prevented all those deaths.  Although he pushes past the devastating news to continue to master all the elements, Aang carries his grief and guilt around, eventually clearing it in the Season 2 finale "The Guru", to unblock his fourth chakra that is blocked by grief. As Aang lays his grief out in front of himself, he envisions his past mentors and friends who were wiped out by the fire nation in the past but is reassured by a Guru that "love is a form of energy that swirls all around... and is still inside of [Aangs] heart" (S2:E18) manifesting as the past Airbenders love for him.

Similar to Aangs loss of his family, Beth also witnessed her mother crash the car and kill herself at just 8 years old. Beth's memories of the crash and events leading up to it surface in episodes 1, 4, and 7, showing that her trauma of losing her mother affects her greatly throughout the show. Losing her only family, Beth had to come to terms with the fact that she was alone with no one to really trust, dealing with loss and denial. This knowledge brought so much sorrow and grief as well as an emotional void that Beth filled with substances to cope with.

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Overview:
Avatar: The Last Airbender focuses on the main character  who is a 12-year-old boy. Aang, who has been identified as the reincarnated Avatar, is the only being to harness all four elements and therefore is a very influential being in the world. With this power, “it is considered the Avatar's duty to master the four bending arts and use that power to keep balance and peace among the four nations of the world, as well as between mankind and spirits”, putting all other life joys behind him.

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Katara and Sokka discovering Aang in ice.  

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Aang ran away from his home, unable to face the weight of his new responsibility. Struck down by a powerful storm, Aang was encased in ice for 100 years until found by his friends, Katara and Sokka. He had trouble adapting to a new reality where the fire nation gained control of most nations, wiping out villages and cultures such as Aang's whole family.

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In both The Queens Gambit and Avatar: The Last Airbender, mental illness is effectively highlighted in the show's plots, following similarities in their storylines. Both shows present different angles of mental illnesses due to the charcters differences, but similarly align with the use of coping mechanisms, trauma, pressures, and senses of sadness and anger; displaying the effects of mental health on individual's lives, The Queens Gambit and Avatar: The Last Airbender include scenes where the character's performance, displaying the challenges of living with mental illness, is real and meaningful.

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The Queens Gambit follows a young Beth Harmon and her journey throughout childhood into adulthood, dealing with isolation and loss as she finds her purpose in life. As Aang lost his family in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Beth lost her mother, when they were involved in a car crash; Beth was just 8 years old, present in the back seat. Traumatized, Beth was placed in the care of an orphanage in the mid-1950s, alone and shy.

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Portrayed in various forms, mental health is shown frequently in shows where characters face traumatic events that leave them vulnerable to various mental issues, surfacing questions regarding the credibility and reality of the emotions and actions the characters display.

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In the universes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Queens Gambit, both plots effectively demonstrate the challenges of mental issues through their depiction of coping mechanisms, traumatic events, and the pressures influenced by the roles of their character. The way Avatar: The Last Airbender portrays Aangs mental struggle when dealing with such detrimental events, allows the viewer to understand the detriments of different traumas and various coping mechanisms the characters develop to move past them. In addition, The Queens Gambit is more graphic and meant for an older audience. The show presents a different view of mental illness, showing other effects that trauma has on a similar character with different ways of dealing with them.

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A piece of Fire Nation propaganda, supporting the criminalization of a 12-year-old

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Waking up to the news of the decline of the world can be overwhelming and distressing for anyone, but it is crucial to point out that it is an extraordinary burden for a 12-year-old boy to bear. Forced to come to terms with the fact that his friends, family, and culture are gone, and he must master the four elements quickly to stop the impending threat of the fire nation, Aang develops sever stress and anxiety from the pressures he feels everyone has put on him.

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What they show: Avatar: The Last Airbender

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What they show: Avatar: The Last Airbender

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Avatar: The Last Airbender focuses on teenagers who have all undergone devastating losses and experienced harsh inequalities; from the main characters, Sokka, Aang, Katara, and Toph, to the villains Zuko, and Azula, the characters' trauma manifests into mental illness. Avatar: The Last Airbender displays many epsiodes that correctly emphasize the impacts of mental health on relationships, beliefs, and emotions, showing what dealing with mental illness is like in reality.

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Amidst bleak beginnings, Beth discovered the game of chess. With chess, Beth has an environment where she can focus and organize her thoughts, her efficiency at controlling the board making up for the aspects of her life she can't control. As she grows older and creates a place for herself in the public eye, a celebrity much like Aang, the pressure of perfection and the title of a Grandmaster loom before her, manifesting negative emotions such as anxiety and stress into her life to block her goals and aspirations.

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Beth's mental health challenges in "The Queen's Gambit" are a result of the traumatic events she experienced during her childhood. To cope with her trauma, Beth developed several mechanisms such as substance abuse, finding creative outlets, weaponizing her feelings, and eventually connecting to positive sources. Throughout the show, the audience sees Beth struggling with the five stages of grief and other trauma-induced mental illnesses. "The Queen's Gambit" offers a realistic portrayal of individuals who feel lost or alone and use coping mechanisms similar to those used by Beth. Through its credible performance, the show draws attention to mental health and its impact on individuals' lives.