The soap opera genre began in 1950's over the radio long before televisions began to pop up in every one's homes.

Many of us have grown up watching the likes of  General Hospital, Coronation Street, Days of our lives EastEnders, and Emmerdale.  It has become the one thing that we as soap fans enjoy for that one hour of escapism but we were drawn to them because of the  the love, the adventure , and the drama that plays on our screens every day.

The one bright spot that sticks out in alot of viewers minds however  , is that these shows  , write storylines that raise awareness for a number of  real topics that the viewers can relate to.

Days of our lives, has a gay storyline on their show where Will Roberts has just told his family he is gay, General Hospital has  raised awareness of the HIV virus through the character Robin Scorpio, Sonny Corinthos` bipolar disorder ,Kate  Howards disassociative identity disorder and most recently,  Coronation Street  doing a storyline about a woman who has the early onset of  alzheimer disease.

EastEnders has opened a whole new world for fans , by breaking the barriers so that we as viewers get a glimpse into the religious beliefs of the  muselim people and their community with the marriage of the character Syed Masood to  Amira Shaw as well as him coming out as a gay Muslim man

With the shows breaking the barriers and showing us a huge array of different topics, that sometimes hit so close to home they are hard to watch as we have in our time experienced, loss and hardship, but in all honesty these shows bring something to the table , so that we as fans can feel like we are not alone in our struggles that we face every day.

Click on the links below to learn about the topics

Muslim Gay Storyline  Bi Polar Disorder   Disasociative  Identy Disorder