Chris McCarthy, the president of MTV Entertainment Group and overseer of numerous ViacomCBS cable networks, believes such language contributes to a stigmatization of mental health and leads to fewer people seeking help. So he's about to offer a rare mea culpa - and undertake an ambitious plan to remake programming at MTV and sister units including Comedy Central, VH1 and even Paramount Plus.

"Having reality stars say someone is 'really messed up'- well, that's not the proper way to reflect that story. It sends the wrong message about somebody's mental health," McCarthy said in a phone interview, adding he believes it makes people less likely to take struggles seriously in their own lives. "We need to do better."

McCarthy says the timing couldn't be better to take on a sadly timeless challenge, with mental health again in the headlines: Meghan, duchess of Sussex, recently said during a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey that she had had suicidal thoughts, and studies show that depression levels have continued to rise during the pandemic.

His plan, expected to be announced Thursday by ViacomCBS, is to turn all negative portrayals of mental-health challenges on his networks' shows to positive ones, then double those number of instances. Instead of characters slinging around clinical terms in an argument, for example, they'd acknowledge a person is struggling and want to know more. Such portrayals would make viewers feel more comfortable with their own conditions, McCarthy said, and do more to combat them.