Schizophrenia in Entertainment - Film, TV, Novels: Accurate or Insulting? (Ep. 20)

Catch-up chat: re future episodes; people who call us “overbearing moms” and blame the family; patients’ “rights” vs. family caring;   

Themes: What does entertainment media get wrong?

• Lack of named diagnosis - UnReal, Girl Interrupted
• Inaccurate/unresearched portrayal of SZ - Words on Bathroom Walls
• Madness Always Linked to Genius - The Soloist, Beautiful Mind, Shine, Proof
• Mistrusting Medication and Treatment - Beautiful Mind
• Lack of Diversity - often male/white - no cultural differences in attitudes/traditions represented
• Tendency Toward Violence - even serial killers - The Fisher King, Donnie Darko, The Joker
• Hallucinations as mainly visual/romanticized - Beautiful Mind, Words on Bathroom Walls
• Long/Lifetime Hospital stays - Love Actually
• Blaming Family Dynamics/ Bad childhood as only “cause”
• Treatable with Therapy alone - meds are bad - One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest
• Romantic Love/ A Good Job can “cure” you - Words on Bathroom Walls 
• SZ    Films “based on a true story” whitewashed for entertainment value - 
• Those with SZ are “possessed” by supernatural
• Too Much Hope? Recovery? - Benny & Joon

Some things they get right:

• Employment can be an important element of recovery - The Joker
• Medication as often vital part of Treatment  - The Joker, Silver Linings Playbook
• The mental health system needs so much work - I Know This Much is True, The Joker
• Family Emotional Reactions/Burdens - Silver Lining Playbook, I Know This Much Is True,

• Other movies mentioned: The Snake Pit 

Links:

https://thecinemaholic.com/schizophrenia-movies/

Next week’s guest:

Michael Mackniak, JD  , Guardian Ad-Litem Services, Melissa’s Project

Helping Families Control the Chaos of Mental Illness at Home and at Work.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to our podcast, Schizophrenia. Three moms in the trenches. From the place where schizophrenia and real life collide. East Coast, West Coast, Middle America. With Miriam Feldman, Mindy Gryling, and Randy Kaye. This is episode 20. We've been, before we roll tape, so to speak, we chat. And we we've been chatting about obviously Britney Spears and the news and conservatorship and how different it can be for each family. We're also chatting about shows to come. And next week we'll be interviewing Mike Makniak, who's a great advocate for those with mental health issues and their families, and about Melissa's project. And there's a lot to talk with Mike about next week. But we're also looking ahead to shows where we interview our sons. I'm not sure my son will be willing to be involved, but I think that Mindy and Mimi, your sons will be, which will be very interesting to hear their point of view. And so that's ahead. We are also looking ahead, and we believe we're doing this in September. We're going to be talking about people in the clubhouse movement and hopefully people who are part of what they call the hearing voices movement, or we might have a little bit of a debate about who can help make decisions and uh that each case is different. So we've got a lot coming up. I uh we're also in talks with uh crisis intervention training to see if they will talk with us, and there's a lot ahead because there's a lot of issues ahead. And FYI, we were just chatting about people who resent our commitment to our children and see it as interference. And Mindy, you were saying that you've gotten one or two star reviews on your books from someone who said, How dare she try to control her son's life?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Is that and and also my um association with the Treatment Advocacy Center has been bashed in some of some of the book reviews, um, whereas I see them as heroes helping people with very serious mental illness who really need help. That's that's their niche. So, right away, if someone um you know bashes my book, because I worked with them on some legislation in Minnesota when Jim was first sick, legislation our family needed, then I know that they're not uh thinking of our situation. And that makes me very sad because I think when we all work together, when we have people who don't think families should be involved, families need to be involved in those discussions because evidence shows with research that when families are around, our children do better. And I could certainly say that for our son. The times we've been blocked by the mental health system often are when he's doing his very worst. And then eventually they kind of check him out and give up on him, and then he's back to us, and then we have to work even harder because we weren't involved all along, and maybe he wouldn't have gotten to that point if we'd been involved. So I feel just as strongly about family involvement as some groups um don't want it.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Well, I do too. And you know, the thing is, people with schizophrenia who can advocate for themselves and determine their course of treatment for themselves, God bless them. But the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of people, it is a thought disorder. They are not capable of, they're in an alternate reality. So how can they manage their treatment? And nobody else wants to, the state doesn't want to step in and take care of them. Maybe they want to just shoot them up with drugs and medicate them into super so they're not a problem, but they don't care about getting them back to some quality of life like we do. And then when they, like you said, maybe when they give up, when they can't do anything, then they give them back to you.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

So clearly we have to do a show about this. I mean, that is, and and I just had uh coffee today with someone who contacted me, having heard our website. Turns out we live two towns away, and and she finds the podcast so helpful. Uh, her daughter, though, is in a different place from my son, because her daughter thinks the medication she's on is the best thing since sliced bread. Her daughter says this medication is a life changer. Uh she takes it herself every day because she knows she needs it. That's a vastly different situation from where my son is, who, given a choice, he would try to manage without his medication. And it has never, ever, ever, ever worked. And he would wind up the big three jail, dead, suicide, you know, I mean, there's so many places. So, anyway, that is definitely a topic we will cover in in years to come. And, you know, chatting about Brittany and the conservatorship issues. We were just saying how the media skews things. And tonight's episode isn't necessarily about the news and the media, but certainly everybody gets to have an opinion and gets to have it heard, whether it's valid or not. That's just the nature of the internet. But there's another area of informal education that people get about schizophrenia, and that is entertainment media. That's books, and I don't mean informational books, I mean novels, uh, film, and television. So I thought we'd just kind of have a talk tonight about some of the movies, TV depictions that you think have been terrible depicting schizophrenia, and what we think have been good, because there are a lot of issues, and I looked up a lot of articles and scientific things, and we can sum it up. But I'm curious to ask either of you to let's start with a movie or a television show that you think totally got it wrong in terms of schizophrenia. Do you have anything in that category?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

I'm guessing we all will pinpoint one flew over the cuckoo's nest. And um, that one, 1975. My grandmother was in the Rochester State Hospital. That was uh, I knew about that. We visited her there. Um, I visited her there every other week. And she also um came out and we took her out to eat. She came and visited our house. So um I wanted to see that movie. I like Jack Nicholson and and I knew it was something about mental illness. And when we saw it, um, I thought it was a really good story, but my goodness, uh that wasn't my reality with uh my grandmother in the state hospital. And eventually she went to a nursing home. Um, you know, she didn't want to be in the state hospital. She could have easily been in her home nowadays with support or community care, because she was very high functioning. But that was such a disconnect from reality. And then later, when I started working on um the mental health system as a legislator and as a mother, that movie just set us back so far.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

You know, um, in E. Fuller Tory's E. Tori Fuller's book, Surviving Schizophrenia, at the end of the book, he has a list of the 10 worst things that happened to the cause of you know serious mental illness and treatment in America. And he lists that movie as one of the 10. And he says, um, you know, I'll read you a quote from it. He says, the patients are depicted as oppressed, not sick. And in the end, Chief Bloom escapes from the hospital to live happily ever after. In reality, Chief Bloom probably would have joined the Legion of the Homeless Mentally Ill individuals living under some bridge or ended up in jail or dead. And, you know, this is this is the truth. And I always loved that movie too, because I thought, you know, it's such a great romanticized vision of, you know, quirky people and being oppressed. And then once Nick got sick and I went through this experience, I realized how far from reality that is, and how dangerous the ideas of that movie, because that movie set the template for thinking about mental institutions for our country since then.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Right, and all filled with nurse ratchets, and all they want to do is and and you know, it's not maybe not far from the truth back in the day when the mental illness treatment it has changed. And back in the day there were lobotomies and there were uh not so many different medications, and there probably were some practitioners who only wanted to keep the patients quiet. But that movie, I remember seeing it and loving it as a kid because you root for McMurphy, is that his name, Randall McMurphy, and you root for the Indian and you're like, Yeah, the Indian got out, and then it happened in my family, and hospitals are very different from that, and it's it's vastly different. I'm not a fan anymore.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

So definitely one flew over the cuckoo's nest is well, and another thing about that too is it's it's so um heavy-handedly anti-medication. You know, the nurse ratchet is the enemy, and the medication is poison. And listen, I don't love the medication either, but you tell me, put yourself in a room with your 21-year-old florally floridly psychotic son, you'll be begging for the medication too, to give him to at least get him to a point where you can start to heal him.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Right. Exactly. So uh no one here, a fan of One Flew over the cuckoo's nest, as any kind of reality-based uh in researching this. I mean, we can go way back, but I'm not familiar with the snake pit, which is an old, old anybody familiar with that? That was that came out the year I was born, 1948.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

So your parents didn't take you to see it. No, nobody took me to see it. But you know, but I just hear about it, you know, just the name of it, the snake pit, doesn't that say at all? It really backs up. One flew over the cuckoo's nest. And I've just read about it at times, and and the state hospital, what it which it was based on, you know, was a torture type place again. So it's the same sort of thing. But I now, in my more informed life, try to only see movies that get good reviews that I think they will be somewhat realistic based on my reality. So I would never waste my time going back to see it.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Well, I'd like to talk about a movie that just came out this year, or maybe last year, or I think this year, that's on the whole other side of the spectrum, so to speak. There's a movie that came out that's called um Words on Bath and Walls, and it was touted as, you know, this groundbreaking movie that talks about this young guy in high school's experience with getting schizophrenia and dealing with it. And then I watched the movie and I was like, really? Again, um he uh the person who wrote the movie, I did some research now. The person who wrote the the screenplay and the director who made the movie, um he talks about it in a uh interview, and it said he only talked to two psychiatrists in working, you know, getting ready to make this movie, and nobody involved in this movie talked to anybody with schizophrenia.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

What?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

And they depict the um, you know, I was really disgusted with it to the point where I turned it off halfway through, but you know, they depict the the voices or actual characters that sort of are almost like make me think of um some sort of quirky um Harry Potter kind of uh you know uh characters who are actually physically there talking to him, and he has three different ones and they're always there, and each one represents a different facet of his personality. And you know, I think that movie is really it's a very difficult thing to try and depict what that is really like, and it it makes it almost cartoony, and then also another thing that they really got so wrong is they had this absurdly fast reaction to medication where you know you see these guys are in his room talking to him, and he takes the medication, and within seconds, they start to break up like glitchy sort of video things and just for Pete's sakes, yeah. But I mean at that point, I'm just like, okay, I'm not like thanks for the heads up. I will not see that one. But then this is the thing that really kills me is that it is also very much sort of anti-medication. And at the end of the movie, he's saved by the love of a young girl who, you know, he has a girlfriend and now they profess their love to each other, and she's convinced him to, or he decides to not take his medication and just pro um uh proceed with his um his desire to be a chef, which he's he's presented as having, you know, this genius ability to be a chef. So you have a guy who refuses medical treatment, and he's gonna just go on and present himself to the world in his beautiful state of psychosis or not, but um, and he's saved by the love of a good girl. And I mean, it's just like seriously, guys, are we still making movies like this?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

I'm sorry to hear that. Well, as long as we're on newer movies, the one that I think so it sounds like we're gonna do movies we really liked last, perhaps. But this one is kind of in between. It's I really liked it and I really didn't like it, um, as far as how it portrayed schizophrenia, but it's called The Joker. Have you seen that one? You mean the Batman Joker one with Heath Ledger?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

No, this one is how did the joke? It goes back Joaquin Phoenix, that one, the Joaquin Phoenix one.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Okay, yeah, forgot about that one. He was it goes back to when he was a child and it talks about things. And and I was it was recommended to me by a psychologist, a teacher who teaches psychology at the University of Minnesota, and he was the one who did the study guide for my book. And he's um an incredible man who is very much for the listening to the people with mental illness. He said most of his psychology students are students that have some sort of mental illness. So he recommended this movie, otherwise, I might have missed it. And so my husband and I went, and I loved the message in there that employment stabilizes people with mental illness. You know, main character, the Joker, was a clown. That was his job. You know, he went and entertained little kids in the hospital and he carried signs to advertise store openings and things as a clown. And he loved that job and it stabilized him. And at one point in the movie, he loses that job. And so that to me is a really good message. Employment is important for people with mental illness. You know, Randy's son wants COVID, he lost his job. You know, that affected his mental health. So I love that part of the message. I also um Does he take medication at all in the movie, or just the stuff? Medication was another message that I loved. He took his medication. He was um he took all his own medication because his own mother was dysfunctional. He took care of her, she did not take care of him. So she left, he left, he fixed her meals, did her washing, helped her give give her a bath, even, and he took all his own meds. And then there was a cut in the mental health system, and he went begging for more meds and for a prescription and to have his meds paid for because he didn't make that much money as a clown, and he couldn't get his meds. And so when he lost his meds, which he wanted to take, then he deteriorated. And then also he had trauma in his life. He got beaten up by some thugs when they tried to rob his some of his clown stuff, and he ran after them and they beat him up. So he lost his employment because of that, and then he lost his medicine and he wasn't stable. And then the movie turns into more the stereotype that we don't like to hear or to see in movies about then he was violent. He killed his mother, he smothered her, and he, you know, he became the joker, the one we see with Batman, this very evil person. Well, but you know what?

SPEAKER_02 17:41

We don't like to see those depictions, but let's be honest, we don't want people to be terrified of people with schizophrenia and think that they're gonna jump out and kill them. But come on, schizophrenia does come with the potential for that kind of violence. And this movie, I think, depicted it in a very realistic way.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

It was tragic, but it happens. I that is absolutely true. That's the other thing that I did like about it. I didn't like to see that part of it because, you know, as you know, and listeners know, our son in his early days had delusions that he thought he had to kill me. So the idea of that brings back my PTSD. But I also uh Jim has said he doesn't he met somebody once who said um uh he was introduced to a third person by a friend of his who said, This is Jim Gryling, and he has schizophrenia. And this young woman who he was being introduced to said, Are you going to kill me? So Jim felt very bad about that. So this dual feeling about that, but I did think it was done um done very well.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, it's it's so interesting because movies need to be entertaining as well. And uh so obviously, if the Joker had only been the first half of the movie, nobody would have gone to see it. So, but I'm um it's very interesting. Then I remember having that feeling as well, and I had totally forgotten about the Joker that they brought that up. I think we have to talk about a beautiful mind, Ron Howard's movie, because that that was game-changing in many ways and flawed in many ways as well. And I've found ways to come to grips with it. So I think that it did a very good job of helping us to like the main character, and I've and this one based on a true story, although it veers quite a lot from the novel and from not the novel, the um biography and and the end of it, but you know, it made you root for him, and I think in the beginning of the Joker, you kind of root for him as well, and it was a bit of a suspense movie because you didn't know at first that those hallucinations were hallucinations. You you were left as the viewer as much in the dark about whether it was real or not as John Nash must have been. So I think that it was a very loving movie about schizophrenia and seeing him capable of love and capable of guilt, and showing how difficult the side effects of the medication are, so that you could understand why he would want to stop. My two beefs about that movie, one of which I think was necessary for entertainment purposes, and the other I think was not. They depicted, and this is true in a lot of the movies, and probably very true on if these walls could talk, is that the name of the movie?

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Uh um words on bathroom walls.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Words on bathroom walls. Okay. So that in my experience and the experience of people I've spoken to, both with schizophrenia and having a loved one with schizophrenia, the hallucinations are not just visual, and they are not as clear as the visuals in A Beautiful Mind. John Nash sees these people and they're real, and he sees them, and they're real to him, and it's a whole thing. And a lot of times, and I think you have to do it to do it poetically. So I get it. I think it was the director's choice, but it does kind of it's good to be aware that it spreads a misconception that hallucinations are visual. You see people in the corner, and you may, like you may see people, but hallucinations are not mainly visual. It could be sounds you hear, smells you smell, tastes, a feeling of things crawling up your arm. So I think you have to take poetic license, but I think it's good for viewers to note that there was poetic license taken in those visualizations. So don't really have a With that, I would like people to understand that that's not what hallucinations are like. You know, cute little girls and friendly people. And but in the end, I feel like they really downplayed the fact that John Nash, at the end, when he gets honored by his former students, they was that he was on medication. Like they kind of go on the medication, then you know, and he says it very quietly that the medication helps him to realize that the hallucinations are not real, that the medication helps him stay functional. And that was really kind of glossed over.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

I love that movie, and um, it came out a couple of years after Jim was first diagnosed. He was diagnosed in 99. It came out two years later, and so Roger and I went to it and we absolutely loved it. You know, as you said, Randy, it took poetic license with only visual hallucinations and that they were fully formed real people. Um, but then we took, um, we went again with Jim a month later or so, and he was like two years into his illness. He was getting used to it. He himself still had reservations about needing to stay on meds, which he doesn't anymore. He's totally with his meds now and very interested in them working well. But at the beginning, everybody, I think, struggles. Do we really need all these side effects? But he also loved the movie. He does have, he has auditory hallucinations, he has, um, he smells things. I mean, he has all of his senses get involved with his um symptoms, but he does have visual uh hallucinations. And he sometimes sees little tiny people, not fully formed big people, but he does have people that are in the room with him when he's psychotic. And so he thought that was really a wonderful depiction and it was realistic, you know, just given it was a movie, so it couldn't have everything in there. The other thing I want to say about A Beautiful Mind, I've I read that biography, maybe you too have as well. And one thing that was very unrealistic about the movie was that his wife stayed with him all the time and helped him on and so forth. No, she couldn't take it and left him, you know, for quite a few years. She still loved him, she still checked in with him, but she wasn't his wife, you know, for many of those years. And he wasn't on meds for many of those years. So he wandered, um, wandered around at Princeton and the students made fun of him. And um, it was only in his later years as he stabilized, you know, as many people do when they get older, in addition to taking meds, that he stabilized. But he didn't get the Nobel Prize while he had schizophrenia. He did all the work for that before he was diagnosed. So it kind of glamorized that a person with schizophrenia could get a Nobel Prize, but he got it later in life after he'd done all that work. And then also, um, his son, when he got schizophrenia, John Nash was, you know, very helpful in his son not having that miserable life that he did. His son was on meds.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Wow, very interesting. So I'm just gonna run down. I want to read a Facebook comment. I just kind of put this on Facebook and ask people what they thought. And um Barb Courtney said I've been listening to radio shows from the mid-1900s. Mid-1900s. It sounds like it's 1905, but I guess she means 1950s or so. And in them, mental illness is either criminal or embarrassing. In today's media, it seems that mentally ill people need to buck up and not be coddled. That's the way they're presenting it. Also, the general population doesn't seem to understand what serious mental illness is about, how it affects a person, defining symptoms, awareness of the lack of outpatient treatment. So it's kind of what we've been talking about. So I'm just gonna kind of run down some other themes, many of which we've touched upon, and mention a couple of other movies we haven't mentioned to see if you guys have any thoughts on those. And the whole point of this is for our listeners, when you get exposed to these movies, just we hope that after hearing this podcast, you'll take them with a grain of salt and uh look and see what the truth might be. Some are better than others. So, one problem that entertainment media has is presenting mental illness without any diagnosis at all. So, for instance, there was a series on TV called Unreal. Did you say it? Okay, so it's sort of like very fictionalized, backstage in a bachelor type. I think it's called the suitor. And the main character is a very unstable genius. So lack of diagnosis, but she's never diagnosed. But she has psychosis, she has she goes in the mental hospital. We don't know what it is, so it's lack of diagnosis. The next thing is something I know you both want to talk about, which is the theme I'll bring up, and I know you want to talk about these movies, is something we covered with our own daughter's sibling or twin burdens, and the novelslash HBO series, I know this much is true. Let's talk about that because I I think they they got it right to an extent, how much the sibling love is there, but the sibling burden is there. But what do you guys think about that?

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Well, you know, I think aside from the whole sibling issue, I think that is the one movie that I've seen that I think hits all the points well. It gets it right. You understand how it emerges, this character was growing up, you understand his struggles with the mental health system, you understand the discrimination and problems with getting good treatment, and and there's violence, and it's shocking, and it's horrifying, and his brother's anguish is so real. It's a tragic movie. I really or it's a mini-series. I had a very hard time with it because not only was it so real, but you know, oddly enough, uh Mark Ruffalo and Nick are similar types, they look similar. And the way that I mean he clearly did his research and the way that he plays these two characters because he plays twins. It looks amazing, amazing curative force. But it's interesting because so many of the mannerisms and ways that his the brother, the one with schizophrenia, um, presented were very similar to my knit. And so it was so hard to watch because it was like I was looking at Nick. Oh, yeah, but I really think that movie got it right.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

When did that one come out? Because I didn't see that one. About a year ago, it's on HBO. It's on HBO, so it never was a in the theater movie.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

No, it was a mini-series. I think it was like three or four episodes. Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, worth watching.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

Um, and I think that one really could teach people a lot.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

It it could, and plus the performances were amazing. And I had read the novel as well, and it's that push-pull, love resentment, you know, all those things that uh we we talked about in our episode, whatever it was, 18, where we spoke with our daughters. Um, let's talk a minute about before I go on with the themes, uh, another really recent movie that won a lot of Oscars, I believe, in the Silver Lining's playbook. So uh Mindy, I know you had something to say about that. So why don't you start with your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Well, I'm a Jay when it comes to criticizing. I'm a judger on the Meyer Spriggs. So I always like to have something that I really like. And I loved Silver Lining's playbook. And um, one thing though is it's not about a person with um schizophrenia, it's about a person with bipolar disorder. So we have to always distinguish that um much more is possible with a person with bipolar disorder in general compared to a person with schizophrenia. But nonetheless, I think it was the director who had a son or daughter, a child anyway, with um bipolar disorder. So it was a very knowledgeable um uh crew that was producing this program. And I really enjoyed the part at the beginning where the where Bradley Cooper was cheeking his meds when he was in the hospital and spitting them out. And then when he came home, he was anything but stable. And his mother was, you know, crying in the car as they were coming home because he had arranged for one of his friends to hop in the car and try to escape, and and that upset her. And and I could relate to that that mother, you know, dealing with a son who wasn't taking his meds, who was kind of you know disconcerting, if not even, you know, really scaring her. And then when they were home, he still wasn't taking his meds. And then that scene, if you've seen it, and it sounds like you probably I bet you both have, where the parents were in bed and all of a sudden there was this bedlam going on in the house, and their son was throwing things out the window, making all kinds of racket, waking up the neighborhood, and the parents were just, you know, in their beds, kind of dumbstruck, you know, with what was going on. And I thought I think every family that deal deals with serious mental illness could relate to that scene. And then we all want to cheer for things ending happily. And then when he meets Jennifer Lawrence, who also has some kind of mental illness, you know, it all had a happy ending in the end. So I love that part of it that you know, anything is possible for people with mental illness. I thought it was just such a well done uh movie.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

And then you know what I really loved in that movie was when there's a scene where they're having dinner or something and all hell breaks loose. Yeah, and the mother, oh, I related to this so strong. The mother, she's just like on eggshells, it's just oh, oh, he's just kidding, and you know, trying to mitigate things between uh Bradley Cooper and the father and not have it explode, just somehow avoid the explosion and just that look of you know terror and apprehension on her face while trying to smile and act like, oh god, I related to that so it was like me too. It was so good.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah, and plus the the father being a little clueless at the beginning and this the eggshells. So I think that you can tell when uh the screenwriter or playwrighter has done their research and has really, you know, had an idea of what it might be like for a family. And I like that they put the medication piece in there as well. There is that myth, which is it sounds like is also in uh the bathroom walls one, which is like, oh, the love of a good person will save you. And then yes, it can. We all need love. You know, I talk about the four pillars of recovery: purpose, structure, and treatment and love or community. So your family. I mean, I had a discussion with my son this week, and we we had a good visit, a little up and down. I'm not sure why, but such is the illness, but overall good. And he was saying how much the family visits mean to him and that he's living in a group home now, and that everybody in the group home who's lucky enough to have their family in their life, they look forward to the family visits. So love really does matter. So I'm glad you brought up those two movies. So some of these movies, careful if they don't, if they have a lack of diagnosis. I think that a good movie should at least name what the illness is so we know what we're dealing with it. There are a bunch of movies, we haven't brought this up yet, that has madness linked to genius. A beautiful mind is one of them, but it is based on a true story, and we all know we have very bright sons. And the woman I had lunch with today said her daughter had 172 IQ. Like it's it seems to be linked. Uh, however, there are some movies that maybe link it too much because there are some people out there with schizophrenia who aren't geniuses, like, but the soloist is one. Do you remember that movie?

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

So it I did not see that one. Who played?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Well, you know, the thing about the being linked to to this genius thing is this is what I was listening to these two girls podcasts this morning, two girls who have schizophrenia. Yes, and uh what they were talking about is the the idea of that you know this link to genius and um that all people with schizophrenia have it. Well, one percent of the population gets schizophrenia. That's one in a hundred, that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people through that big pool of people. There are gonna be some geniuses, just like in any group of people, there's gonna be percentage. We just amazingly, all three of us have sons who are geniuses, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily has anything to do with schizophrenia. But people like to glamorize the story that way, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:52

And of course, again, they're making movies, so I get it. They're not gonna make a story about someone who doesn't take his meds and winds up homeless, and the world is no worse for it. Like that's not a movie. The soloist at Jamie Foxx, and again, it's an adaptation of a true story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayres, uh, who used to be at Juilliard, evidently got ill after his college education, which is a better one.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

He was here in downtown LA. That it was that whole movie started from an uh article that was written by an LA Times investigative uh guy who wrote right, and they had a friendship.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

And you know, obviously the guy was uh a musical genius, but uh it is based somewhat on a true story, and most people say this is an accurate depiction of the ethical issues surrounding treatment. Or remember they got him his own apartment and it was just like weird, he almost preferred the street, like so so. But we have movies with those linked. We have the soloist, beautiful mind, shine, which was Jeffrey Rush, and he wanted to be a pianist. Remember that was the same sort of thing, and Proof, which was a play, and then a movie where the guy with schizophrenia supposedly made this mathematical proof, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins. So again, schizophrenia linked to madness linked to genius, even without a diagnosis. There are movies we've talked about this mistrusting medication and treatment, which we've discussed. Uh often in movies is a lack of diversity. Often the people with schizophrenia depicted are male and white.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

And that's that's the world, and why should these movies be any different? But it's a tragedy because um because uh people of color often are the much later to getting help than other communities. And so when they're not even shown and there aren't any professionals in the movies, just like in real life, if we don't see professionals who are in the mental health field, then people of color are much less apt to see themselves and approach care. And then if you're you know black and your church is telling you or your friends are telling you to pray about it, as some of my black friends have said, they were told, then um then that that's another barrier. So movies need to be diverse. And I so I put the soloist on my list. Thank you for that tip. Not only is it sounds like a good movie, but it has Jamie Foxx in it.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

And there is, and this would be a whole other episode, I believe, but you know, there is a there is a cultural difference in the way people manage it. I remember when I was teaching family to family, and there was a family from India who said, Well, in India, the family's just expected, we're just expected to take care of them. They just don't go to the hospital. And this family said, We just put the meds in their food because that was the only way we could do it. And we could because they left it. So, you know, there are cultural differences. I like to see those depicted more. There are a lot of movies that show people with schizophrenia with with probably um an askewed tendency toward violence, even becoming serial killers, like The Joker, The Fisher King with Robin Williams. It's another one, and um Donnie Darko, which is a movie I never saw that evidently has that theme. Do we know that movie?

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Yeah, I saw that it it's something like that.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Yeah. Uh they show hallucinations as mainly visual, movies are a visual medium. I get that. They this one gets me. They show long time hospital stays, and the movie I'm thinking of is Love Actually, which I think I've mentioned on the podcast before because I felt so bad for Laurel Linney. But her brother's just in a hospital for the rest of his life, and she goes to visit him. And I'm like, when does that happen? That doesn't even really happen, at least. I know.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

You know, the other one is in that bathroom walls movie. Yeah, he has one long hospitalization after his after a suicide attempt. And he's in a room, a single room that's like as big as an entire ward in Australia would be. This beautiful single room with you know, a lamp, a ceramic lamp, which clearly he could break and have open outlets on the, you know, it was so unrealistic. And unrealistic. In this movie, there was never any discussion of the cost of the meds. He just went from med to med, trying this and that. And you know, that's a very white approach to it, too. You know, a lot of people like in The Joker, you know, the med, the cost of the meds is a big issue, yeah. And that that, you know, it was just made as though everybody have it has access to all of these things, and they don't.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Yeah, exactly. Um Girl Interrupted, I don't even have that on my list, but that is another one with without a clear diagnosis and what really happens. And hospital stays, in my experience, aren't very well depicted in movies in general. They're either way worse or way better than what what I've experienced. Uh, what else is a lot of a lot of movies blaming the family dynamics or a bad childhood or a trauma, which I think we could spend an hour talking about, but just be aware of the four pillars of recovery. It's treatment, whatever that means to you, community and love, which might include sometimes your family stepping in to help you when necessary, or other people or practitioners, structure, you know, love and purpose, those things really help. So even some movies with depicting people with schizophrenia as being possessed in a supernatural way, but I think those are more in the horror genre and don't purport to be realistic, I hope. And and the last one it I want to talk about, which again I don't remember really well, is Benny and June. Do you guys saw that one either?

SPEAKER_01 41:52

And I love Johnny Depp. I saw he was in it, but I did not see it.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

It's 1993, so it's Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn, and Johnny Depp. It's a story of happiness and hope showing the possibilities available to people with schizophrenia. However, don't expect a realistic portrayal of the illness. June is simply given medication without any sort of other help, and she isn't introduced to any positive examples of high-functioning people with schizophrenia. They say it's trivialization of a serious debilitating condition. So basically, I think we have made our points. Final words from each of you as to what you would recommend for the viewers when uh for the listeners or viewers when watching the movie about schizophrenia.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

I would just say be aware of all these things, but also if any of you who are viewing this notices or is onto a really good movie, let us know. And so we can highlight it on this podcast. I think we would like to spread the word if we find a really good example.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Absolutely. Mimi?

SPEAKER_02 43:00

Yeah, just um watch it with a grain of salt, if that's can be said. I don't know. But yeah, just remember it's entertainment, it's not a textbook.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Yeah, exactly. I think that that pretty much sums it up. And there are many, many good documentaries and other types of films out there which are more realistic. We're aware that TV and film has entertainment value, and so some liberties are taken. But uh, we just ask that you question what needs to be questioned and fact-check it. And that's it. On our next episode, we'll be talking with Mike Makniak, Melissa's Project, and other things related to helping those with schizophrenia. Thanks for joining us. Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of Schizophrenia Three Moms in the Trenches with Randy Kay, Mindy Gryling, and Miriam Feldman. To get in touch with us or to learn more about our books, please visit our websites at Miriamfeldman.com, mindygryling.com, or randyk.com