August 8, 2015 Loading Docs

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. 

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.’

Yes, THANK YOU Mary, Nikki and Alexander.

via Sharing Culture

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