Candi Wilmot expected a fun trip to the theater with her 9 year old daughter, Adeline, when they watched Disney’s 2025 live action remake of “Snow White.” Instead, the film’s depiction of Sleepy made the experience painfully personal.

Wilmot has type 1 narcolepsy, an incurable neurological sleep disorder associated with excessive daytime sleepiness, vivid hallucinations, sleep paralysis and cataplexy. Cataplexy causes sudden bouts of muscle weakness or paralysis.

In the film, Sleepy is introduced as “narcoleptic cataplexic.” He snores during conversations, falls asleep during fights, freezes and topples over in scenes presented for laughs, behavior Wilmot said was neither realistic nor amusing.

The most disturbing moment for Wilmot came when Sleepy nearly fell backward into a huge chasm before another dwarf caught him. Afterward, Adeline asked whether her mother would behave that way if she stopped taking her medication.

A new analysis provided exclusively to CNN found that films and television shows frequently turn narcolepsy into slapstick comedy. The disorder affects 1 in 2,000 Americans and millions of people worldwide.

The analysis, “A Representation Wake-up Call: Narcolepsy in Fictional Narrative Entertainment,” examined 56 Hollywood productions released from 1983 through 2025. The Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism conducted the research with Project Sleep.

Although fewer than half of the productions were comedies, 80% treated narcolepsy as a running gag. Among 41 characters portrayed as having the disorder, 68% were depicted as unreliable or incapable.

One episode from the second season of “Scrubs” has JD approach Turk, Carla and Elliott and ask, “You guys wanna go laugh at the narcoleptic guy?” The characters then make unethical attempts to trigger a patient’s sleep attacks through sexual arousal.

“No one wants to be the butt of a joke,” said Dr. Shelby Harris, a board certified sleep medicine psychologist and clinical associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Harris, who treats people with narcolepsy, advised the project.

Former NFL player Josh Andrews said Hollywood’s portrayals shaped his own understanding of the disorder. Andrews, diagnosed at 26 while playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, recalled believing he did not have narcolepsy because his symptoms differed from those shown in “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.”

In that 1999 film, Carol suddenly snores and drops her head toward a bowl of soup, only to be stopped by her ponytail. During another scene, she collapses on a bowling lane after discussing restrictions connected to narcolepsy.

The analysis found that 82% of characters with narcolepsy experienced exaggerated sleep attacks. Report coauthor Julie Flygare, President and CEO of Project Sleep, said people do not typically fall rigidly to the floor, abruptly stop speaking and snore, or topple into food.

“The exhaustion of narcolepsy is less obvious to outsiders, generally occurring over several minutes with time to sit or lie down. With cataplexy, our knees might buckle and we might crumble to the ground, but we are fully conscious,” Flygare said.

Workplace stigma also appeared in “The Recruit,” where a stressed CIA lawyer falls asleep during a meeting. His boss throws a pen at him and dismisses his doctor’s note, reflecting labels that people with narcolepsy may encounter from bosses, coworkers, teachers and loved ones.

Even productions praised for medical accuracy can repeat stereotypes. In the 2026 season two finale of “The Pitt,” a man who dies after waiting all day in an emergency room reception area is jokingly described as having “hyper-narcolepsy.”

Positive portrayals remain rare, though the report praised “The Mysterious Benedict Society,” “Wake” and “Hill Street Blues.” “The Simpsons” stood out for showing Homer undergo a hospital evaluation, including a spinal tap, making it the only reviewed production to depict a real diagnostic workup.

Executive producer and showrunner Al Jean consulted Flygare after she contacted him about the planned storyline. The episode kept its humor focused on Homer using his diagnosis to avoid chores rather than turning people with narcolepsy into the joke.

“When medical conditions are portrayed inaccurately, those of us living with them have to deal with the misunderstandings afterward,” Wilmot said. She wants audiences to recognize narcolepsy as a neurological disorder affecting multiple aspects of daily life, not as evidence that someone is lazy.