When stories accompany. Representing Vulnerability in Fiction

Download the chapter in PDF This text is the English version of the first chapter of the Spanish volume La salud mental en el cine y las series. Relatos de vulnerabilidad, encuentro y transformación, edited by Clare Elizabeth Cannon and Pablo Alzola and published by Ediciones Universidad de Navarra in 2026. The book as a whole explores how film and television narrate mental health through stories of vulnerability and relationship, and this opening chapter sets out the conceptual and ethical framework for those readings. The chapter argues that contemporary fiction and television can respond to the hunger for honest yet hopeful portrayals of mental health by using a dialogic approach to vulnerability instead of glamorising or flattening it into stereotypes. Drawing on dialogue research, Cannon proposes a practical framework (engage, pause, seek perspectives, understand deeply, search for and act toward a common good, and attend to circumstantial conditions) so that vulnerable characters are shown as relational, contextual, and dynamic rather than as diagnoses, tropes, or instruments of other people’s growth. Through close readings of This Is Us—Randall’s anxiety and racialised trauma, and Rebecca’s Alzheimer’s—she illustrates how dialogic storytelling foregrounds accompaniment, moral agency, and shared stakes, allowing suffering to be acknowledged without being romanticised or resolved too neatly. The chapter concludes that such human‑centred, ethically grounded narratives can cultivate wisdom and realistic hope, especially for younger audiences who seek stories about connection, cooperation, and collective agency in the face of systemic challenges.