crazed and infused: Good mental illness themed movies #1

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Good mental illness themed movies #1

This will be a recurring post today paired with Bad mental illness themed movies.

#1. House of Fools

From Russia, this subtitled film takes place in a mental institute during the Chechen War. Caught between the opposing forces the hospital residents find

themselves alone without staff.

A great movie that really gets you thinking... who are the people who are 'ill' in the world? Are those with the label, 'mentally ill' really crazier than the rest of society?

I found this movie when I was researching for a paper I wrote for my Sociology of Mental Illness class. There was a great site with a long list of movies with mental illness as a theme. I cant seem to find it, but when I do ill post the address.

ps. Another great part of this movie...a great cameo by (Canadian) Bryan Adams. Very random.. but great

2 comments:

LouJuly 25, 2009 at 11:11 AM
That sounds really interesting! I'll have to see if I can get hold of this one.
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CiaJuly 25, 2009 at 12:20 PM
It was pretty tough to find! I live in a big city in Canada and only one rental place carried it! Hopefully you can find it though!
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About my writing style

While I can be described as generally quite pessimistic and passionate (others would say angry) person, most of what I write here is never really 'angry', but rather the result of having had to bottle up frustrations. As an active feminist activist I am often frustrated with the wall one often faces because of ingrained sexism and other forms of discrimination that penetrates all levels of our society; but as an activist I have an outlet to release this frustration and 'do something about it'. With my experience of mental illness I have had to bottle these feelings because, it seems, my friends and family feel uncomfortable if I talk about it, my doctors sure do not want to hear about it, and often I have enough self doubt that even I will disregard its importance.
But here, I get to release these experiences and frustrations. I get to get them off my chest and work through them in my own way.
So if I sounds angry, its probably just frustration with a healthy dose of sarcasm. ; )

A note on "experts"

It becomes apparent quickly that I am a bit skeptical of the knowledge we have of psychology/psychiatry. My extensive experience with doctors of all sorts has only convinced me that at times psychology/psychiatry are pseudo sciences. What I mean by this is that the people who study and practice these fields - those we call "experts" - often do not know how the mind works, boundaries of diagnoses often blur and there is little awareness of why some treatments work when others do not. Psychiatric drugs are litterally a shot in the dark because often scientists do not know how or why they work, research just tells them that sometimes they do. Diagnoses are at times laughable in how vague and inadequate they are. (How many of us has heard, "you have (bipolar) tendencies" or "characteristics of (obessive compulsive disorder)".)
BUT, to make myself clear, I am not angry toward or dismiss the role of these "experts", they are doing the best they can with limited knowledge. But thats just it... how can anyone be a true expert when so little is known of a subject?

crazed and infused

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Saturday, July 25, 2009

Good mental illness themed movies #1

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A note on "experts"

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