Shutter Island, the latest cinematic collaboration of award winners director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, hit theaters last Friday. I haven’t seen it yet, but I have read a few reviews and – despite the film debuting to the tune of $40.2 million and all the exited “Go see Shutter Island!”-esque Twitter and Facebook updates I saw over the weekend — the overall reaction from critics seems to be, “…meh. It’s not all that hot.”
(For example, NYDailyNews.com’s Joe Neumaier says “‘Shutter Island’ is dead inside” and A.O. Scott of The New York Times warns, “Something TERRIBLE is afoot. Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself [...].”)
Given everything I’d read about Shutter Island up until its release, I was kind of surprised to find such reviews; I was more surprised, however, to find that the review that stuck out for me the most was written by someone who hasn’t seen the movie.
Andy Germak, the president and CEO of the Mental Health Association of Morris County (a New Jersey affiliate of Mental Health America), wrote a quick piece for NJ.com stating that he refused to “spend money to see this film because of its demonization of people with severe mental illness (which the movie calls ‘criminally insane’) and the institutions designed to treat them” and urging others to “avoid this stigmatizing film which Hollywood has packaged as ‘entertainment.’”
Germak’s reaction doesn’t surprise me at all; last week, I noted that there’d probably be some negative backlash from the mental health community. There’s a fine line separating what’s entertaining and what’s stigmatizing, and that line is quite (and often confusingly) flexible given that each mental health advocate carries his own personal experiences and beliefs.
So, no — I didn’t raise an eyebrow when I read that Germak was encouraging others not to see a movie he hasn’t even seen himself.
But I raised two when he suggested, “Let’s leave the dark history of psychiatric treatment in the past where it belongs.”
Hmm.
In the mental health community — whether you’re a consumer, a loved one, an advocate, or all three and more — it’s common to hear people comparing illnesses associated with the brain and mind to illnesses associated with other body parts.
A classic example? “You wouldn’t be ashamed to take insulin if you were diabetic, so you shouldn’t be ashamed to take Prozac if you’re depressed.” Or some such variation.
We do this because it’s effective — it helps people put mental illness into perspective, and helps them see that mental illness isn’t something to be ashamed of (you wouldn’t be ashamed if you found out you had breast cancer, would you?). When you’re sick, you see a doctor. You take medicine. You develop a plan, a lifestyle change, that will help keep you healthy and prevent future episodes. It doesn’t matter if it’s diabetes, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder, depression, or schizophrenia — when things aren’t working properly, you take care of them.
However, when it comes to the history of mental health care, for some reason, some of us aren’t on the same side of the fence as the histories of other kinds of health care. There’s another line.
History tells us that psychiatric care was a living nightmare in the past — it’s no secret.
But…
…so was seeking treatment for AIDS in the 80s. People were ridiculed, shunned, and even killed when others found out they had AIDS. Children were kicked out of school. Doctors refused to treat patients. People treated AIDS patients horribly. Why? Because we were ignorant. We didn’t know anything about it. I mean, it used to be called GRID for crying out loud.
We just didn’t know.
Now, nearly three decades later, we do know. Sadly, AIDS patients are a far cry from avoiding stigma altogether, but the world now understands more. Medical advances are in progress. We know how to prevent it, and we know how to treat it. One day, we might even know how to cure it.
What we don’t do is try to hide the history of it. When a movie comes out and the plot is set in a time when AIDS was widely misunderstood, we don’t launch crusades to stop using the past as a part of movie plots and we don’t encourage people to leave the bumpy history of how we came to learn about AIDS in the past.
It’s a pretty good reminder, after all.
Why, then, do we want to leave the history of psychiatric care in the past? Just as with every kind of illness, there was a point when we just didn’t know. We didn’t understand. We used what resources we had, what knowledge we had, and we built on that as we learned more. Things were horrible back then, but why hide it? Wouldn’t hiding it — wouldn’t acting as if there’s something to be ashamed of — create even more stigma? Perhaps a whole new strain of stigma?
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not suggesting Germak wants us to hide everything about the history of psychiatric care. More likely, he simply wants the world to stop using that history in story lines for fear that the viewing public will see that movie or read that book or watch that television show and think that’s how things are today or that people will fear that’s how others will view them if they have a mental illness. I don’t know that that approach is any more feasible, but I do want it known that I don’t think he’s trying to completely sweep history under the rug.
Still, despite what I think I know about Germak’s meaning, his statement still made me start thinking about lots of other questions, the most pressing of which being “Where do we draw this line?”
At what point do we stop talking about the “dark” parts of mental health care history? Is there a point? Do we talk about the more successful periods, glaze over the iffy parts, and avoid the disasters completely? Do we encourage people not to think about the past and focus instead on the here and now, and work toward the future? Or do we embrace it all, maybe not lovingly, but as part of our learning process and the building blocks that helped us get to where we are today?
I’m for the latter, because I’m one of those folks who believes those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. That, and I never have been able to stand big pink elephants.
But I want to know what you think.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Katie at 3:35 pm on
February 22nd, 2010It’s a movie for crying out loud. I don’t understand what the uproar is all about. You know what the people portrayed in the movie…some people like that do exist(they are suffering from severe mental illness…but they do exist none the less). Do you see people getting all upset when a cancer patient is portrayed in a movie by being bald? Not all cancer patients are bald and suffer from hair loss…some do but many don’t.
It’s a movie and that’s what sells. It is what it is. On TV a lot of schizophrenics and bipolar disorder sufferers are portrayed as being violent…many people that suffer from those two mental illnesses aren’t violent at all…many wouldn’t hurt a fly I am willing to bet…some of those patients are violent but many are not. But violence sells…the more insane a criminal is portrayed as the more entertaining it is. Come on do you think a movie about a mental institution that has patients just running around catching butterflies is going to sell? Many institutions back in the day were nothing more than human snake pits…it’s no secret. Many mentally ill patients were tied up, put in freezing cold dark rooms(it was thought that they couldn’t feel temperatures since their brains weren’t wired correctly), they were barely fed and they were given no human interaction at all.
It’s time to get real.
Erika at 1:50 pm on
February 23rd, 2010You are correct in saying, Katie, that nobody gets upset when a cancer patient is portrayed as bald. There is no doubt that people accept it. The problem is, however, a lot of people believe that most cancer patients are bald. They believe this because two of their main sources of information – the media and the entertainment industry – show them that is the truth. The same can be said with mental illness: society portrays those with mental illness as violent, so people believe most are.
The psychiatric industry is just another form of religion, more speifically, secular moralizing. Without stigmatizing certain behaviours no therapy is possible. The question remains: what should be stigmatized and what not? I guess, the answer you will give will depend heavily on the political world view you subscribe to.
Bi Polar people are violent from someone who has lived with someone who I know is Bi-Polar. I care about her but I cannot live with the violence regardless what the reason is. I was punched in the face her rings were in my hair. I did not even have enough sense to protect my face. Ed was there he protected me and another sum “yung” guy, I call him Tony. I almost took a knife to her if it weren’t for my Ex I would have defended myself. I went to the doctor at the hospital in Redding to get stitches from being severly beaten in the face. I went to the Rescue Mission in Redding to heal. I walked around town under the influence of vicodin while trying to not feel the pain of being abused. I am still trying not to feel the pain.
Amanda at 2:03 pm on
February 24th, 2010Psychiatry is secular moralizing? I am honestly amazed you can just say and expect to be taken seriously. How on earth does having a mental illness equate at all with morals? Is it immoral to be depressed? To be bipolar? To have DID?
Perhaps from the point of view of a person who’s had no mental illness problems and never cared for someone with them you see different forms of mental illness as something that is stigmatized because of the behavior. Ok, I’ll grant that most people have a weird idea of what MI is, but that really doesn’t equate to anything that has to do with morals. Religion? Huh?
I would really like to hear your explanation of the comments you’ve made. You equate so many things that are vastly different to mental illness, yet try to act like its all the same thing. Psychiatry=religion=morals=politics? Seriously, do you think that makes sense?
Paula Carnes at 10:19 pm on
February 24th, 2010Is it better now that most mental patients are no longer patients but street people? How has psychiatry improved?
@Amanda:
“MI” is just that: behavior. When other people don’t like it, it is called “illness”. Don’t you see the politics behind these labels?
MI is oftentimes adaptive if we wouldn’t fight it with chemicals. But that would require some benevolent attention most of us are unable or unwilling to give. I totally understand that, but there are reasons why people go nuts, and these reasons are oftentimes our own actions toward the problematic person in question.
Micro politics creates MI and with micro politics we try to fight it, by calling a problematic person “insane” we put all the blame on them. Instead of us, they should be ashamed by being called so and simply stop engaging in it. I see the value of this mechanism in behavior control, but it should be reserved for objective vices, like the initiation of force, and not merely for excentrities like the ones described in the DSM as personality disorders.
Evil people should be fought by stigmatization and eventually by retaliatory force, not the ones in need for help. Does that make more sense to you now?
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