Madness Made Me

Screen Shot 2015-08-13 at 11.01.43 amDown the end of the long polished corridor, Mary O’Hagan comes face to face with the condemning words written about her in her psychiatric files. Director: Nikki Castle Producer: Alexander Gandar

“The files were all about me, but couldn’t see ‘me’ in them.”

This is a wonderful 3-minute film that sums up the feelings of someone ‘lost’ in the mental health system. It’s also about recovery. I think the film is best summed up by someone who has been there, so I leave you words from Laura Delano from her excellent website.

‘I watched the 3-minute documentary Madness Made Me the other day, and found myself nodding in solidarity and thinking “Hear, hear!” to myself as I watched the protagonist, Mary O’Hagan, reclaim her personal narrative from psychiatry.  Read more

One Woman’s Fight to Die

logo_atlantic-5b33470f4ada56c0097447002ab7a177Gina has an extreme genetic disorder that has caused her muscles to deteriorate. Sound and light harm her ears, so she sits in complete darkness. Gina communicates using a touch alphabet method—and in this moving short film from New Zealand’s Loading Docs initiative, she makes her case for voluntary euthanasia. “I think a compassionate god would want people to have the option of a humane death,” Gina says, her words flashing on the screen. The film is minimalistic and visual, and for a few minutes we are able to get a brief sense of what it’s like in Gina’s silent, dark world.  Read more

A UN Advisor Reading What Psychiatrists Wrote About Her Will Make You Question “Insanity”

ThePlaidZebraLogoAt the end of a long and sterile corridor, Mary O’Hagan feels the noose of madness begin to tighten. As a young woman in the 1970s, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and spent several dark years in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

“I’m glad I didn’t know I was going to be the chair of an international network, have a book published in Japanese, advise the United Nations or become a New Zealand mental health commissioner. If I’d told a psychiatrist I was going to do these things they would have upped my anti-psychotics on the spot. They kept pouring accelerant onto my years of despair by telling me I had an ‘ongoing disability’ and needed to ‘lower my horizons,’ writes O Hagan.  Read more

One Woman’s Fight to Die

logo_atlantic-5b33470f4ada56c0097447002ab7a177Gina has an extreme genetic disorder that has caused her muscles to deteriorate. Sound and light harm her ears, so she sits in complete darkness. Gina communicates using a touch alphabet method—and in this moving short film from New Zealand’s Loading Docs initiative, she makes her case for voluntary euthanasia. “I think a compassionate god would want people to have the option of a humane death,” Gina says, her words flashing on the screen. The film is minimalistic and visual, and for a few minutes we are able to get a brief sense of what it’s like in Gina’s silent, dark world.

The Loading Docs initiative supports 10 filmmaking teams to create three-minute, creative documentaries that tell New Zealand stories. This year’s theme is connection.

via The Atlantic

Dunedin Doco Helps Wrestler Rediscover Mojo

header_logo-1After years of neglecting his passion, a Dunedin wrestler is back in the ring.

Producer Veronica Harwood-Stevenson said the three-minute wrestling documentary Wilbur Force was filmed in Dunedin and Central Otago over three cold June days.

”We had weather was that was not conducive to wearing Lycra,” Ms Harwood-Stevenson said.

”It was freezing,” actor and wrestler Wilbur McDougall said.

The documentary premiered at the International Film Festival in Auckland last month and can be watched online.

The film had been well received, Ms Harwood-Stevenson said.

”People love it.”  Read more

Madness Made Me – A 3-Minute Documentary

cropped-Laura0724-nearfinalI watched the 3-minute documentary Madness Made Me the other day, and found myself nodding in solidarity and thinking “Hear, hear!” to myself as I watched the protagonist, Mary O’Hagan, reclaim her personal narrative from psychiatry.  Afterwards, I sat with an intense mix of joy and despair as I smiled at the strength of the human spirit and shook my head at the fundamentally unjust and dehumanizing nature of the psychiatric record.  It’s so big and so profound, though unless you’ve been subjected to a psychiatrist’s note-taking yourself, few ever recognize this.

As mental patients, our entire humanity is reduced to a list of symptoms, entirely subjective (i.e. “professional”) opinions on our worth and our character jotted down in sloppy handwriting.  These arbitrary, invented words are scribbled down in a matter of minutes but have the power to strip us of our identity, our right to fresh air, our bodily integrity, the sanctity of our minds, our dignity, our humanness.  And of course, though we may awaken to their absurdity and abandon them as we become ex-mental patients, these pages upon pages of invented words will forever follow us in written record, stored in hospital basements and file cabinets, ghosts of our past.

Thank you, Mary O’Hagan, for sharing your story, and thank you to Nikki Castle for directing this beautiful, thought-provoking, empowering, haunting film.

via Recovering from Psychiatry by Laura Delano