Movies, Books and Music About IT

Movies, Books and Music About IT
by
Robin Hall


There are many good movies to help those without IT to understand our illness/es better. The films often offer accurate portrayals of people's lives with brain disorders.

Yesterday I watched a fine example with Richard Gere and Lena Olen, Mr. Jones. Gere did a masterful job with the up, down and in-between times caused by manic depression. One thing was especially vivid, the fact that Mr. Jones would rather take his chances with the often psychotic depression and risk suicide than to not have his "addiction" to the manic phase.

I have experienced this with each new medication that comes out for my IT, major depression. I lose myself in the meds, sometimes for months and would rather take my chances than take the meds, which don't work for me anyway.

There are other good TV shows and movies to help make clear what is happening for those afflicted. Perhaps they can assist your friends and family see deeper into the problems these films portray and at the same time offer emotional distance by watching actors rather than us.

The TV show Monk does a great job showing OCD and anxiety. It also lets us laugh and cry with Adrien. The excellent cast adds so much they are all to be commended. What a wonderful and rare person Trudy must have been.

Cracker, an older UK TV series shows various personality defects in one of the best series ever.

The movie Lost Weekend with Ray Milland is relentless in its no holds barred portrayal of an alcoholic. Milland's Night Into Morning serves well too as a cautionary tale of alcoholism.

Modern films about alcoholism are part of the story in Changing Lanes and 28 Days.

Joanne Woodward stars in The Three Faces of Eve, a grim and gritty portrayal of MPD, multiple personality disorder. Sybil with Sally Field was a well done TV movie about the same disorder.

Mark Vonnegut's book Eden Express is an interesting self-portrayal of schizophrenia. Now he is a physician and Dr. Vonnegut's view of that time in his life may suggest he had manic-depression.

An excellent movie about schizophrenia is A Beautiful Mind. I quote Netflix here, "John Forbes Nash Jr. (Russell Crowe) was a brilliant economist -- when his mind was clear. But life changed forever with the revelation that he was a schizophrenic. Nash's brilliance persisted amidst the anguish his mental illness caused for him and his wife (Jennifer Connolly), and 40 years after his diagnosis, he won the Nobel Prize for economics. Connolly's acting and Ron Howard's direction won Oscars, and the film was named Best Picture. " This entry was suggested by Anonymous.

There are many examples of missed diagnosis. Early in my life I was diagnosed as having boarder line schizophrenia with recessive tendencies. Later this was changed to various sorts of depression and even later major depression.

I can still remember many of the doctors STATING, "I have just the medication for you." Each was wrong.

Music too can offer observations into our world. Velvet Underground's Heroin song is a step by step visualization of shooting up and its effects.

We live in very stressful times. Knowing that something is wrong with us is useful but it rarely helps us improve. Some of us do improve over time, some do not. Thousands of suicides a year point to the failure of the pharmaceutical companies and the medical professions to really do their job. I hope things improve.

If you would like to add movies, books or music to this list, please email me and I will check the offerings out, then credit you or not as you wish.