True crime stories must be consumed in moderation as they “distort your view of the world,” according to a leading psychiatry professor.
Dr Brendan Kelly said a lot of people are interested in the genre because “you see things you wouldn’t dream of doing”.
US-based mental health expert Dr Thelma Bryant has said that watching true crime is a red flag as it means you find trauma relaxing.
On Lunchtime Live, Dr Kelly said this isn’t necessarily true.
“There is no particular reason to regard it as a red flag for anyone unless you’re going completely over the top,” he said.
“Moderation means balancing it with other things, even if you only watch a tiny bit of TV or listen to very few podcasts if they are 100% true crime, that will start to distort your view of the world a little bit.
“You can become overly wary about other people, have some heightened anxiety and hypervigilance.”
Supporters of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassy from Nextflix's Making a Murderer true crime series at an event in London. Image: Alamy.comCrime journalist Nicola Tallant said she “should be raising red flags” to everyone around her if true crime is that unhealthy.
“There’s an awful lot of people who enjoy true crime and they do relax to it,” she said.
“One of the most frequent things said to me by people is I put them to sleep at night as they’re listening to a long podcast.”
True crime genres
Ms Tallant said it depends on the genre of the true crime content.
“There’s organised crime which is a little bit clearer; the motivation is about money, a fallout within a grouping when it comes to murder,” she said.
“The other genre I talk about is domestic murders and that kind of thing, that is intriguing and I think we need to understand that.
“We want to delve into the minds of killers, we want to keep ourselves alert on who to avoid - that’s how I feel about it.”
'I was completely desensitised'
Newstalk Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly said she recently turned her back on true crime.
“I caught myself going down the road of enjoying it and I also found I was completely desensitised to certain things,” she said.
“I love true crime, I love the investigations, all the procedural side of things and understanding how it works.
“But there are podcasts I was rewinding because I missed the details like ‘did a person get bashed in the head six times or seven times?’
“You could just be absorbing this information while doing the dishes and I just cannot stand it.”
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