Katie Cadigan

Just in time for National Mental Health Month: We are fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Katie Cadigan, producer of an important new documentary, narrated by Rita Moreno, titled When Medicine Got It Wrong.

The film shows the history of a group of ordinary parents and their struggle to change the political, medical, and cultural attitudes towards schizophrenia in the United States. The film will be airing on public television stations around the country in May.

PART I

Welcome Katie. Please tell us a bit about why you made When Medicine Got It Wrong?

When my youngest brother developed schizophrenia over 15 years ago, our family plunged into the dark world of stigma and cultural misunderstanding about mental illness.  We were staggered by how many roadblocks stood in the way of getting adequate treatment, roadblocks that simply do not exist for diseases affecting other parts of our bodies.

When Medicine Got it Wrong became my journey to discover the roots of this stigma and why our health care system still has not caught up with decades-worth of scientific research on the nature of mental illnesses and effective treatments.

Thanks to a mental health activist, my film partner Laura Murray and I were introduced to the first mothers in the nation to rebel against being called “schizophrenogenic.”  Their inspiring stories opened our eyes to a whole hidden world of grassroots activism, one that not a single historian in the nation had ever recorded. Laura and I are honored to be able to bring their remarkable accomplishments to television.

Can you backtrack and tell us a little bit about your first film, and your personal story?

Several months after my brother John developed schizophrenia he asked me to help him film what was happening to him.  That question birthed an ongoing creative collaboration, which became the HBO/Cinemax documentary, People Say I’m Crazy, the story of his decade-long journey into recovery.  It is still the only film ever made by someone with schizophrenia about what it is like to live with the disease.

My heart broke when, after every public screening, elderly mothers would approach me saying they’d been blamed, saying they never knew it wasn’t their fault.  And, outside of the film world, I cringe when I’m asked “what happened growing up?” whenever I reveal I have a brother with schizophrenia. When Medicine Got it Wrong became the home for my frustration at why our culture, our policies, and our mental health care system remain rooted in false ideas that families cause schizophrenia.

We want to thank you and Documentary Educational Resources for sending us a review copy of When Medicine Got It Wrong–we found it to be very informative and poignant.  Can you tell us a bit about the film?

Rita Moreno narrates the story of a small band of middle-class parents who, in the 1970s, got sick and tired of being blamed for causing their children’s schizophrenia. They started the nation’s first family activism group, fighting for the rights and care of people with severe mental illness.

These pioneering families launched a multi-pronged rebellion, declaring “Yes We Can” and taking on doctors, politicians, and the cultural fear surrounding schizophrenia.  Their daring and outspoken success inspired families across the country to organize, and within a few short years grassroots powerhouses, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and NARSAD, the first brain research foundation devoted to mental illness, burst on the national scene.

(We’ve been interviewing scientists from NARSAD all month. They have been offering a free series of programs for the public called Healthy Minds Across America. Also, NAMI is a wonderful organization and we encourage people to check out their web site, and their magazine, the Advocate, which recommended Therapy Revolution in their December, 2009 issue.)

The groups’ battles played out amid the life-and-death consequences of medical misunderstanding – from the assassination attempt on President Reagan to rampant homelessness and incarceration for those not receiving treatment.  When Medicine Got it Wrong opens a hidden chapter of recent American history, a story of devastating prejudice that reveals the origins of today’s crises in mental health care.

The families’ activism helped shape dramatic advances in brain research and an explosion of neuroscientific discoveries. By the 1990s the term “schizophrenogenic” mother disappeared from textbooks for good. Medicine now knows that people with schizophrenia live fulfilling lives when good treatment, medications, and services are in place.

Part II of this interview will be posted tomorrow.

Comments

This post currently has 11 comments/trackbacks.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.

Trackbacks

From Psych Central's website:
Tweets that mention Important New Film about Schizophrenia to Air on PBS Part 1 -- Topsy.com (April 28, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
uberVU - social comments (April 28, 2010)

Important New Film about Schizophrenia to Air on PBS Part 1 … | Film (April 28, 2010)

Important New Film about Schizophrenia to Air on PBS Part 1 … | I Film Channel (April 28, 2010)

Important New Film about Schizophrenia to Air on PBS Part 1 … Blog (April 28, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
Important New Film about Schizophrenia to Air on PBS Part 2 | Therapy Soup (April 29, 2010)

From Psych Central's World of Psychology:
Best of Our Blogs: April 30, 2010 | World of Psychology (April 30, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
Healing the Addicted Brain: Interview with Dr. Hal Urschel | Therapy Soup (May 18, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
Mental Illness in Film | Therapy Soup (June 29, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 28 Apr 2010