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advocacy, advocates, mental health, mental health channel, mental illness, mentally ill, movie, opinion, racism, review a movie, schizophrenia], stereotypes, video
I read a very good blog post about this movie https://vimeo.com/139278058
Unfortunately I can’t post the movie here because the file type isn’t supported. I hope you will click the link above and watch Mermaid. It is a thirteen minute video about schizophrenia. The Mental Health Channel gave it the July Award for their film festival.
If you see any problems with it I hope you will contact the Mental Health Channel and let them know your concerns. mhc@arcosfilms.com
Here is a blog post that points out what the writer thinks the problems are with the movie. I hope you will watch it first before reading her blog post, because I would love to hear your initial impressions before being influenced by someone else.
I’m commenting to remember to watch this later. Thanks for posting.
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Great, I hope you get a chance to see it.
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I don’t know much about schizophrenia but I did not expect the brother to be so violent. Also,the drug she was screaming for was to work instantly? I’m off to read the blog link now.
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Great points! The violence is definitely a stereotype and you are correct about the medication – it never works that quickly. Thank you so much for your observations!
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It’s unfortunate that most films show a person with schizophrenia as violent. It teaches the public to fear people with mental illness, especially those diagnosed with schizophrenia, when the fact is most would never do harm to others.
It also seems to highly promote force to deal with someone who is psychotic, which I feel is truly sad, and exaggerates the effectiveness of medication as some instantaneous miracle drug when in reality the effectiveness of antipsychotics is more complicated in how effective it can be as it varies from person to person.
Overall at the end of the film I felt a great disappointment. To me it felt like the film’s objective was to scare people. As a person with schizophrenia, I was highly displeased by the film.
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You make great points! I feel the same way. I think it is a terrible film. I don’t think the writing is good to start with, but beyond that the messages are so inaccurate, stereotypical and just plain wrong. Thanks for giving your input!!! 🙂
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Just watched the video. The writing wasn’t good – tried to cram too much into 13 minutes. I have no first hand knowledge of what an episode is like, but this seemed more contrived than real slice of life. A couple of things did jive with you’ve written though: The increased risk of being shot by police and believing yourself to be Jesus.
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I didn’t think the writing was good either. You are right though that some of the symptoms are accurate – that is about it though. It was so discouraging for me to watch!!!
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What scene would you write and how would you write it?
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Great question. I think if I wanted to show psychosis I would write a scene about when I thought I was a healer and I baked cakes for everyone – I was able to make friends during this time even though I heard voices constantly. If I wanted to show a person stable on their medications I would show someone as a lawyer, artist, waitress, or business owner – something that shows that people with schizophrenia are capable of so many things.
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Okay, do it! I’m throwing down a 2016 challenge. 🙂
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I wish I knew a film maker 🙂
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If you write it, he/she will come.
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I honestly can’t say anything about schizophrenia because I wasn’t diagnosed with it but I do know I had psychotic breaks during my illness and I knew I wasn’t thinking right and was seeing things that were not “real” but I also knew they were real to me. Also, in my case, there was tremendous paranoia. I didn’t really feel any of this with him. (the in and out of reality with psychosis). Also, they seemed to stress a great deal on his violence and in my experience I had no violence, not even a tiny bit. Also in my case, there was a great deal of emotional pain for feeling “out of reality” which I didn’t feel he had in the film. So, schizophrenia may be different than what I experienced but comparing it to my experience, it didn’t seem realistic at all.
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I think you make some good points. I have never been violent either, and I didn’t really think the actor was believable either. Thanks for watching it and for sharing your experience!
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