Here’s a free 14-minute film that examines our failure to help individuals with serious mental illnesses and a sample from a new e-book by an investigative journalist with lived experience.
The film is The Realities of Serious Mental Illness by Dr. David Pickar, an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. The self-published book is entitled Not Just Up and Down: Understanding Mood in Bipolar Disorder by John McManamy.
The Realities of Serious Mental Illness begins with interviews with experts, consumers and families explaining schizophrenia and what it feels like to have a serious mental illness. The focus of Dr. Pickar’s film then shifts to advocacy when he interviews Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) about his Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act and praises Assisted Outpatient Treatment as an important recovery tool.
Because Dr. Pickar’s film endorses Murphy’s bill and AOT, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, have not been promoting it — even though former NIH Director Tom Insel is interviewed in the film and Dr. Pickar heaps praise on NAMI. But Dr. Pickar felt as a psychiatrist that he needed to speak out frankly about both Murphy’s bill and AOT and he didn’t back down from making his case for supporting both in his informative film.
The Realities of Serious Mental Illness a film by David Pickar from David Pickar, MD on Vimeo.