A Selected Annotated Bibliography on Portrayal of Schizophrenia in Film

Cross, Simon. “Visualizing Madness: Mental Illness and Public Representation.” Television and New Media. 2004 http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=23&hid=106&sid=0b1c3a10-d0da-4835-a312-a6a077b24944%40sessionmgr115. Simon Cross at University of Lincoln explores images of madness and mental illness through television program makers. He suggests to television consumers that the mentally ill whom are depicted in TV programs are usually shown as being “dangerous.” Cross suggests an approach to public representation of mental illness with television programs holding social responsibility of accurate depiction. Cross’s research helps to explain to television consumers the extremely identifiable figures depicted as mentally ill. These findings will help support my research about the portrayal of mentally ill in the media.

Heinrichs, R. Walter. “Historical Origins of Schizophrenia: Two Early Madmen and their Illness.” Journal of the History of Behavioral Science. 2003 http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=20&hid=22&sid=9c7ef2c8-a64c-4000-9f63-0f4adc3c6c01%40sessionmgr15R. Walter Heinrichs discuss historical accounts of Schizophrenia in the eighteenth and fourteenth centuries. He suggests these two cases to historians in order to discuss the past in relationship to the present in regards to Schizophrenia. These cases may suggest that Schizophrenia, although seen as a “new” illness, has been around longer than historians and medical experts thought. Heinrichs findings are very helpful in the medical and historical fields of research. These findings will help in my research to provide an origin and historical background of Schizophrenia.

Kondo, Naomi. “Speaking Out: Mental Illness in Film.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 2007 https://blackboard.unh.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp.

Noami Kondo of Wesleyan University, suggests to the public at large about the incorrect and negative portrayals of Mental Illness in film, being a Schizophrenic herself. Kondo draws on personal experience to support her findings. Film, says Kondo, being such a powerful avenue of information, adds stigma to an already misunderstood disease. She draws on examples of Hollywood movie portrayals of mental illness, specifically Schizophrenia, and explains how they are inaccurate, stigmatized and even insulting to patients with this disease. Kondo gives personal insight on the topic of depictions of mental illness in film which will give me a greater understanding of inaccurate portrayals of Schizophrenia in movies such as A Beautiful Mind.

Owen, Patricia. “Dispelling Myths About Schizophrenia Using Film.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Jan. 2007 http://web.ebscohost.com.libproxy.unh.edu/ehost/detail?vid=8&hid=110&sid=70fa74cc-f2a4-44b4-ac7e-f88fe0d9be04%40sessionmgr114. Patricia Owen, from St. Mary’s University at San Antonio, suggests to educators about dispelling myths about Schizophrenia using film to teach students. Owen conducts a study to examine the effectiveness of a visually based format to disband misinformation about schizophrenia. She uses past studies to show that the negatively stereotyped and inaccurate movie portrayals of Schizophrenia fall parallel to the public’s knowledge of Schizophrenia. Owen’s (2007) main question is, “Can this same medium be used to educate?” Following the study, Owen found that there was improvement of knowledge about Schizophrenia after a short film, but it was gender based. She found that film increased the knowledge of students about Schizophrenia, but more so in females. This article by Patricia Owen will be helpful in my research because it gives many examples of negative stereotypes and inaccurate information about Schizophrenia which will help to support my argument.

Wahl, Otto F. “Mass Media Images of Mental Illness: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of Community Psychology. Oct. 1992 http://web.ebscohost.com.libproxy.unh.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=12&hid=110&sid=70fa74cc-f2a4-44b4-ac7e-f88fe0d9be04%40sessionmgr114. Otto F. Wahl of George Mason University reviews the frequency, accuracy and impact of mass media portrayals of mental illness. Wahl (1992) concludes that mass media portrayals of mental illness “have significant effects on attitudes toward mental illness and treatment” and “that their depictions of mental illness are characteristically inaccurate and unfavorable.” Wahl’s research provides his audience with examples and explanations of inaccurate depictions of mental health in films. This will aid me in my research because many of Wahl’s arguments are backed by past research findings.

 

 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

On Tuesday, November 9th, Alexis Pauline Gumbs was invited to our school by many co sponsors of the university. Alexis is a feminist writer and poet. She focuses on technology in many of her writings which is why this presentation/interview was relevant to our Cyberbodies class. I went to this event on Tuesday and found it very interesting. Alexis started out with something that she wrote for her cousin and for us. It was a short speech on technology and humans and how the two are seeming to blend as one the more advanced we get as a society. Her main point was that we are humans and we can make decisions because we are not technology, and our opinion matters and we can make decisions on our own with out the influence of technology. She ended her speech with a poem that she wrote which I loved. I even asked her for a copy of it. It focused on the same idea her speech did, about humans in connection with technology and it was all about Alexis making decision; yes, no, this and not that. I found this poem so amazing and the way she read it was extremely moving.

After her speech, Courtney Marshall interviewed her and asked her guiding questions that turned into more of a group discussion with the audience. The discussion focused on our reliance on technology as a community. Blogs were mentioned a lot and this is where I felt least involved because I don't blog besides the blog I have for this class. It was hard for me to understand what people were talking about, but I learned a lot about the ways people blog, the emotions that go into it, and the reactions that people get through blogging.

I really enjoyed Alexis Pauline Gumbs and I found her to be one of the most intelligent people I've ever heard speak. She is so involved and passionate about what she does and I think it's incredible the effort and time she puts into her work.

Equality Now

I have never really gone to any specific feminist websites, but as I was browsing the web, I came across a website that really struck me. It's called Equality Now and it's goal is to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through mobilization and public pressures. Specific issues this website focuses on are rape, domestic violence, trafficking, FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), reproductive rights and gender discrimination. Equality Now has created many different campaigns for different public issues related to women. Equality Now works to help protect and promote human rights around the world.

Following Alexis Pauline Gumbs article, "Virtual Togetherness," Equality Now creates an online community for women who have gone through similar experiences as the women shown or talked about on the website. The majority of this website refers to women in less developed countries, Africa, India and Afghanistan for example. Although this website refers mostly to women outside of the United States, having a website that makes these kind of women's issues public, helps other women because they can relate to them. This website has so much information on ways to campaign, promote women's rights, and many facts that bring these "women's issues" to the forefront of human right issues. It allows people who feel very strongly about these issues to become part of this community and take part in campaigns, networks and projects so they feel part of something. Being part of something, anything, provides people with a sense of community. It allows people to be an info-sumer, simply just taking in facts that are put on the website. It allows people to be a communitarian which means they can go to this website and become very much a part of Equality Now. There are several ways that someone can become part of Equality Now including organizing events, fundraising, writing letters and circulating petitions. These are ways in which someone can really become a communitarian, becoming part of the Equality Now community.

Final Paper Proposal

For my final paper, I've been going through a battle with myself about what interests me, and what I'm passionate about when it comes to choosing a topic to research. My heart keeps telling me to go with what I'm passionate about, but I'm afraid that it will be impossible. But I'm going for it. So I finally found a topic that I really am passionate abAout, that does have to do with technology, at least a bit. My topic is movie portrayals of mental illness. I thought long and hard about this topic, and I came to this conclusion because of a little story I'd like to share with you.

When I was about 10, my brother who was about 15 at the time, started to hang out with the wrong crowd, get into trouble at school, partied a lot and his grades started to drop dramatically. When he got to high school, this all increased by a lot. By his senior year, my parents took him out of the high school and transferred him to another high school, away from the group of friends he hung out with. When he finished high school, he went off to college in Indiana. Not even a semester into school, my parents got a call from him. He was frantic and I knew it wasn't good news. My brother is now 26 years old, and has schizophrenia. He's been incarcerated several times, on several occasions for many different reasons. He has never been able to keep a job, and without his medicine, he wouldn't survive. So the jist of my story is that my mom and my brother were watching a movie called, "A Beautiful Mind." I was not here for this, but my mom told me that she saw my brother tearing up because he felt so connected to this movie because the main character also has schizophrenia. I think the portrayal of the characters disease touched my brother because it was like looking at himself from the outside. But on the other hand, I've read people's responses to movies that have mentally ill people in them, and they've said how unrealistic these portrayals of mental health are in movies.  So for my final paper, I would like to delve into this idea a bit more, and find out if movie portrayals of mental health are accurate, and maybe see if there are racial and/or gender discrepancies between portrayals of mental health.

For my final paper I would like to research movie portrayals of mental health. I would like to research if movies depict mental health differently across race and gender as well. My thesis for this paper will be, Movie and Television portrayals of mental health show inaccurate depictions of mental illnesses and create a negative perceptions of people with mental health illnesses. I plan on reading reviews of movies, watching a few movies myself, and doing research on mental health symptoms and behaviors, and one thing I would really like to do is interview/talk to my brother to see his feelings on this concept. I want to know if when he watched "A Beautiful Mind" if it was an actual accurate depiction of schizophrenia. Hopefully I'll find all of this out throughout my research, because I would love to know if my thesis is correct.

Self Reflection

Rereading all of my blog posts, I noticed a few themes.

The first theme I noticed was about activism. I discussed, throughout the majority of my blog posts, ideas about technology and feminism and how I've become more aware and how we should improve our footprint on this earth. I stated a lot of ideas that mention things like, "Just hop on a plane and travel the right way"  or "just meet someone new and get to know them" or "just don't abuse the internet like we are." All of these statements to me, reflect a sense of activism, and forward motion on my part to start to be conscious of my actions. It's more of a self activism more than societal, but starting small is a necessity to starting anywhere.

Another theme I noticed while rereading my posts was the idea of inequality; specifically gender and class inequalities. Throughout Joelles blog post that I wrote and the AIDS video blog post, I mentioned several things about gender and class inequalities that in our society, seem to be not spoken about, but only by activists.

One last theme that I realized I spoke a lot about was my whole life in connection with each of these readings and videos. I saw many connections between my life and people in these readings. Although I have not gone through any of what Joelle Ryan has, I still consider myself a struggler and becoming stronger because of it just like her. I also related myself to the use of the internet that was spoken about throughout the readings. I noticed that I was like the people that were talked about in the readings. I am always on the internet. I am always using facebook. I am distracted from my social and daily life because of the internet. This is where my self activism comes into play. This is where I notice my actions and try to reevaluate how I live my life via the internet.

It Gets Better...Not for Everybody!

In Joelle's blog about "It Gets Better", she argues that it, in fact, doesn't get better, at least not the way that Dan Savage says it does. Joelle Ruby Ryan is a Professor here at UNH. She is a trans-gender woman, with a PhD. She is a very dedicated activist in the LGBT community and works extremely hard to make a stand in what she believes in. 


Joelle argues that, it doesn't get better, refuting Dan Savages statement. As a privileged, white, heterosexual, male, Dan Savage can in no way, tell people who suffer everyday of their lives, that it will get better. Until he has walked in their shoes, he has no right to tell people to "hang in there." Joelle quotes herself as being, "fat and I am trans-gender and I am a feminist and I am queer" (Ryan, 2010). She also states that she is working class, a "first generation college student, a person with six figure loan debt who has no class privilege to fall back upon" (Ryan, 2010). Dan Savage is trying to tell her that "it gets better"? She has spent her whole life working her ass off to make things better, and she has only seen a fraction of success. How long does she have to wait for it to get better? Joelle is a suicide survivor, and makes a very true statement that people who don't understand her situation would think. "Just work hard and you too can get ahead and climb the ladder of success! Just keep on living and don't kill yourself and the world around you will magically improve" (Ryan, 2010). This statement resonates with me so much because I feel that it is what our oblivious, naive, arrogant society thinks about people who do not fit into their white, heterosexual, middle class, american mold. I agree with Joelle in that this is what people think if they don't understand. But part of this problem is the part where people don't even WANT to understand. They don't want to learn about other people and they don't care to look deeper than the cover of a book. It's sad, but true. As humans, we have a tendency to judge, but lets get past this. Next time you meet someone, take some extra time to get to know them. Ask how they are, who they are, and find out more than just what brand of clothes their wearing. Actually get to know someone without judging them. 


Joelle says something that screams truthfulness. "It's not that things get better, it's that we get stronger" (Ryan, 2010). For the past few months, I've struggled with the balance of my life, and the stress and strain being put on me. I'm not by any means trying to compare it to Joelle's strife, but in the same sense, the only reason why I'm still coping is because I've become stronger. The world hasn't changed. The world is the world, and it is what it is. But as an individual, I've become much more aware of my surroundings, feelings, inner thoughts, and I've learned how to deal with them. I feel as though Joelle has done the same. She is in credibly strong, courageous, empowered woman who has started to build her wall of self esteem. We can tell because she is still the amazing activist that she is. She has gotten stronger and stronger as time goes by, but the world has not gotten better. 

Nakamura Reading: Where do you want to go today?

The main argument of this reading is the idea of the internet as a "glass window from which network users can consume the sights of travel as if they were tourists" (19), meaning that you don't have to leave your desk chair to travel across the globe. You can sit right where you are in New England, in the depths of frigged winter and be in Bora Bora at the same time vacationing in the sun. Our computers are used as "a window into another world" (19). We are able to do anything these days just by a click of a button. Some might even say that the visions that are given off by their computer monitor are better than reality. The author says that everyplace is just like this because of the easily accessible-ness of going anywhere on your computer. So what's the point of having the choice to travel if everywhere is like here and the same. Computer companies, especially, do this in their ads on tv and on the internet. It shows that there is no need to travel when you can live exotically through your computer and see the world through a square machine looking glass, which doesn't even give any justice to sights seen around the world. I say, just get on a plane and travel. Don't even bring your computer, just get up and go. Stop "traveling" on your computer, and travel the right way. 
I feel like I have an okay grasp on this idea and could possibly explain it and its importance to another WS major/minor not in this class, yet there are still some things that i'm having trouble to grasp. Such as the idea that the internet is a good or bad thing. I have ideas about the ways that the internet harms our society, and the ways it helps...but overall, i couldn't tell you if it's a good thing or not for our society.  .