Powerful HBO Documentary About Disturbed Children & Two Programs You Should Watch

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(5-14-18) Here are three programs you should watch.

Number 1:  Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds and Dr. Tom Insel are featured in a jarring look at children with serious emotional disorders and mental illnesses in the HBO documentary – A Dangerous Son. (Watch trailer above.)

Number 2: At the conservative, Republican Heritage Foundation,  psychiatrist and addiction specialist Dr. Sally Satel, author and advocate  D. J. Jaffe, and the National Alliance of Mental Illness’s Capitol Hill expert Andrew Sperling discuss whether government programs are helping or harming mental health care delivery.

Number 3: PBS’s Minds On The Edge program continues to be one of the best shows ever broadcast about what happens when someone gets a serious mental illness in America.

One in 10 American children suffers from serious emotional disturbance and more than 17 million have experienced a psychiatric disorder. A Dangerous Son focuses primarily on three families in crisis, each struggling with a child’s severe mental illness, desperately seeking treatment in the face of limited resources and support.

Two of my favorite advocates, Dr. Insel and Sen. Deeds, spotlight how our children cannot get decent mental heath treatment, even if they become violent.

2. Heritage Foundation

The conservative, Republican Heritage Foundation asked a panel to discuss:

Severe Mental Illness: Are Policies Helping or Hurting Those in Need?

Given how the Heritage Foundation influences the Trump Administration, this panel discussion is worth viewing.  As Jaffe has done in the past, he charges that government programs ignore serious mental illness in favor of “mental health” – making an argument familiar to those who have read his book, Insane Consequences: How The Mental Health Industry Fails The Mentally Ill. 

Inspired by the release of my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, Fred Friendly Seminars invited national experts, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Eric Kandel, to recount the problems that arise when a family member becomes ill.
Minds On The Edge, first broadcast in 2009 and later rebroadcast after the 2011 Tucson shootings , continues to be one of the most impactful round table discussions about mental health ever broadcast. Sadly, little has changed since Miami Dade Judge Steven Liefman, Dr. Fred Frese and a slew of other prominent mental health advocates and officials offered their strong and often opposing opinions.
Here’s a short trailer that will give you a snippet of what to expect.
Click on Minds on the Edge to watch the entire riveting hour.
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About the author:

Pete Earley is the bestselling author of such books as The Hot House and Crazy. When he is not spending time with his family, he tours the globe advocating for mental health reform.

Learn more about Pete.