If you have HBO and anyone in your life with bipolar disorder (or you have it), you should watch “Boy Interrupted,” a documentary that played at the Sundance Festival.

I think this movie will be up there with Kite Runner as one that sticks with me. It is haunting and it is powerful.

The filmmaker is Evan Perry’s mother, and Evan Perry killed himself at age 15. His parents did everything right, got him into therapy, saw a psychiatrist regularly, loved him unconditionally.

If there’s anything you take out of this movie, it should be this: there’s no black and white with mental illness. The media portrays it as two ends of a spectrum: either the person with mental illness is a crazed killer (most killers are sociopaths and assholes, but not necessarily mentally ill, and most persons with mental illness are not violent) or psychiatry cures it all.

I’ve been afraid to watch the show “Mental” precisely for this reason. I have taped every episode, but haven’t had the heart to watch it. I’m afraid it’s going to be the typical bullshit of “these poor mentally ill folks, if only they’d take their meds, all would be right with the world.” And add a rogue psychiatrist who goes out of his/her way to be cool and avant-garde. There may be a couple of them out there, but your chances of finding them is remote. And who knows if a groovy hat and James Deanesque personality means anything with respect to recovery.

This documentary is a real heartbreaker. I could so empathize with Evan. I just got him, that’s all I can say.

The quote in the title is something the psychiatrist said. It’s pretty true.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 6:27 pm and is filed under A Nutter's Prattle, Depression Self Help, Mental Health Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.