Liz's analysis is excellent and Philip I agree with your comment about the poor quality of the journalism. Where was the research? What about a basic sense of compassion and respect for the people being interviewed? In too many cases the mainstream media approaches issues surrounding mental illness with an air of condescension and sensationalism. Philip and Liz please continue to speak out. We need to hear the intelligent thoughtful opinions of the people who actually know something about mental health issues.

I'd like to make the salient point that when someone is "off meds" and behaves violently that this may have next to nothing to do with their underlying mood problems and a whole heck of a lot to do with withdrawal and rebound. To blame violent behavior on "schizophrenia" for instance when someone abruptly goes off antipsychotics is IMO very unfair. It probably has a lot more to do with abrupt withdrawal and the very toxic effects the medication had on the brain over time (even if it was just a short time). We need to hear a lot more about chemical dependency on psych meds and what that does to behavior and a lot less about mood disorders and violence. I agree with Philip and Liz that it's extremely annoying to have neophytes tackling these topics for a mainstream media outlet.

Most people who are treated as though they are dangerous and unpredictable are most likely going to get drawn into that reality, sooner or later, I should have thought (like a child who is constantly told that they are bad, they will end up believing it, themselves). It may not have been True at the outset, but one only has to raise one's voice in anger to confirm everybody's worst fears, and the thing escalates from there.

Nobody knows anything about mental illness, and it's about time that that was acknowledged.

Matt

I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder in January 2005, and I hate when I'm "lumped" into the group of people labeled "mentally ill". I take my medication as prescribed, and have had to change it due to mood changes. But not once have I been violent or have committed any heinous crimes. When people find out I have a mental illness, they immediately think that I may be "one of those people". My marriage ended because of this illness, but my perserverence to live a fruitful and benevolent life will not. I am a normal person, just like everyone else. This type of journalism is fueling the stigma, not "bringing light" to the subject.

The emotion of Fear is a main tool in psychiatry. Patients in fear are quiet, submissive and obeadient. Patients show a great reduction in symptoms of mental illness when quiet.
If the patient fears mental illness he/she will continue to consume the magical pills that make them "good" instead of "bad".

Thomas Szasz wrote
"Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), the "father" of American psychiatry and a champion of the therapeutic state" Rush wrote "Terror acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness." Rush went so far as to invent a new "therapeutic" device -- actually, an instrument of terror and torture -- which he presciently called the "tranquilizing chair."

In the old days of insane asylums, the truth about psychiatry was apparent: the madhouse was a snake pit, and snake pits were limited to insane asylums. Today’s snake pits—dispersed throughout society—are concealed by a façade of pseudomedical diagnoses, therapies, treatment-advocacy centers, alliances for the mentally ill, and the renaming of insane asylums as “health care facilities.”

What inferences did and do doctors draw from their concepts of mental illness as brain disease? First, as Carl Wernicke (1848-1905), a prominent nineteenth-century German neuropsychiatrist observed, "The medical treatment of [mental] patients began with the infringement of their personal freedom." In addition, it began with "benevolent tortures," such as frightening them by throwing them into a pit of snakes, the origin of the term "snake pit" for insane asylum. More specifically, the humoral imbalance theory led Rush to employ "bleeding, purging, low diet, and the tranquilizing chair. "The tranquilizing chair was a chair-like contraption for confining the patient and rotating him until he became dizzy or lost consciousness. This was supposed to rebalance the circulation in the brain. It was but a small step from the nineteenth-century's tranquilizing chair to the twentieth century's tranquilizing drug, supposed to rebalance the chemical imbalance in the patient's brain.

This is a good post and gets across the fundamental point that bipolar disorder is very much misunderstood, to some extent the result of uninformed media. For a real-world, honest look at the repercussions of this illness, and what happens when proper treatment and support are lacking, I would like to recommend my recently released biographical novel, Broken Saint. It is based on my forty-year friendship with a bipolar man, and chronicles the internal and external struggles of his troubled life as he battles for stability and acceptance (of himself and by others). More information on the book is available at www.eloquentbooks.com/BrokenSaint.html.

Mark Zamen, author

". . . why are folks like that employed full-time in journalism when reporters like me are on the sidelines?"

Shameful injustice.

You continue to do great work. I'm glad you're out there. Please know your labors are making a difference.

Finally watched the show and I didn't like it -- Liz does a good job. The story of the kid who refused treatment and killed his mother was just too much. Who ever said that taking meds is the only treatment for heavens' sake? The kid sure needed some help. Just because he refused antipsychotics doesn't mean he should have been sent home to continue to play with knives and guns -- please give me a break. Are meds the only thing we have in our toolbox for these problems? I'd like to know the whole history of this kid too -- there was something going on that we didn't see in this documentary. Glad they made the point that Eric Harris was taking Luvox but they did not make the point that antidepressants are linked to mania and psychosis and violence -- unexpected, impulsive and out of character violence. Sure they showed a segment on withdrawal but they didn't show how withdrawal itself, if done too rapidly, can lead to violence. It was a very irritating and simplistic take on the issue and Kaplan was downright scary. I thought it was really rather ironic that this segment was on the same show as the segment on using wild mustang horses to reform prisoners and empower emotionally disabled kids -- that was too ironic for words. The healing power of love, trust, non-judgmental behavior, kindness -- OMG! What were the producers thinking? It should have been all one segment and then they would have been on to something.