Mental Illness: A Film Analysis

Superior Essays
There have been several different approaches to addressing mental illness in today’s world and each approach has fallen short in some way due to varying factors including but not limited to deficiency in resources and insufficient collaboration with community partners. These components appeared to be the main themes that encompassed the mental health issues presented in the book Crazy by Pete Earley and the films: Back from Madness, Depression: The Misunderstood Epidemic, and Schizophrenia: Stolen Minds, Stolen Lives; however the main theme that links these films and book together was the struggle for stabilization in a world that is ill equipped to manage mental illnesses at the micro and macro levels. The underlying problem with each individual’s …show more content…
This heavily contributes to the downfall of individuals who are struggling to achieve stability with their mental illness because in most cases they are essentially given the bare minimum for survival due to lack resources and care coordination. These individuals are facing a battle not only with stabilization; but also with organizations who pass them around from place to place in hopes of achieving different goals that do not always align with what the client truly needs. Pete Earley’s son, Mike, had a support system who fought for him and alongside him. That is the essential part of the story – his support system fought alongside him when he was in the process of achieving stability and they fought for him when his voice wasn’t being …show more content…
Not to say that there hasn’t been progress towards addressing the various issues that have arose; however, there is a shortfall of care coordination that continues to be evident throughout the nation. It appears that the way organizations responded to individuals in the book and films was to prioritize safety and provide minimal efforts towards stabilization. If there was a safety concern in the film and the book, that issue was addressed sometimes without the goal of achieving long term stability. It appeared that safety was approached from the standpoint of incarcerating an individual who actually needed help achieving stability in the process of becoming safe. Safety to self and others is a vital component that all social workers should uphold with integrity and compassion for each individual. The professional, ethical standard of social workers includes an obligation to ensure that the people they are working with are safe and do not present risk of harm to themselves and/or others (NASW 2017). The NASW code of Ethics summarizes this concept through the 1.02 Self-Determination Ethical

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