King of Hearts

About the only thing related to mental illness accurately portrayed in this satire is the asylum itself.

psychiatric hospital

The Hairdresser's Husband

Warning: Reading this could spoil the film.

Two suicides: A boy sees the body of a hairdresser who has presumably killed herself by overdose of barbiturates. The reason is unclear. Loneliness? In the second, the same boy, now a man, has married another hairdresser who loves him so much she ends her life by jumping into a maelstrom. He reads her suicide note which tells him she wants to die before he loses his passion for her. In the last scene he demonstrates denial of her death in voicing to a customer his expectation that she will return.

barbiturates | bereavement | denial | suicide

On A Clear Day

The clues amass very slowly but at the end you realize it was all about bereavement and a futile effort to undo it. A brief scene of a husband videotaping his gagged and handcuffed wife, dressed in tight black leather, in public and in broad daylight, is comical rather than disturbing. In three brief scenes an Asian man learns to assert himself in the face of racism. The collapse of a character on a sidewalk looks like anything but the panic attack diagnosed in the emergency room.

assertiveness | bereavement | panic attack | Sexual Masochism | Sexual Sadism

The Anniversary Party

During much of the last portion of the party almost all the characters show evidence of intoxication with ecstasy. Several characters encourage each other to drink plenty of water to avoid harm from the drug. While intoxicated one character, for obscure reasons, almost succeeds in killing himself by drowning in the swimming pool. After his rescue and resuscitation he berates himself for failing and appears to prepare to try again. A telephone call from the father of one of the characters announces that the character's sister (?) has died of an overdose, also apparently a suicide. Brief conversations about sobriety, drugs and recovery, and about how suicide is no longer an option after you have children.

ecstasy | intoxication | psychostimulant intoxication | suicide

Pierrot Le Fou

Warning: Reading this could spoil the film.

Pierrot (Ferdinand), at the end of the film, having killed his lover, sits on a rock overlooking the Mediterranean, wraps dozens of sticks of dynamite around his head and ends his life in a spectacular explosion.

suicide

Gran Torino

#grantorino

Spoiler alert!

To avenge harm to a friend a bereaved elderly Korean war veteran suspecting he may be terminally ill puts his affairs in order before provoking a gang to kill him in a way that all but guarantees their conviction. Suicide by gang?

suicide

Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

A chance encounter with a dying accident victim leads to a healing conversation and resolution of grief over a baker's loss of his wife to (unexplained) suicide. The psychotherapist leading a psychotherapy group for widowers seems inept. Brief talk about survivor guilt and emptiness. Even dance teacher Ms. Hotchkiss herself seems to come to terms with the loss of her mother.

bereavement | group psychotherapy | psychotherapist | suicide | survivor guilt

The Soloist

Replete with reasonably authentic efforts at portraying psychopathology, especially of schizophrenia. A young boy hallucinates a burning truck. As a homeless adult he wears bizarre outfits and pushes his belongings in a cart. A homeless woman talks about her ambivalence about taking the lithium that deprives her of comforting hallucinated voices. Another woman displays loose association and flat affect. The protagonist's experience includes command hallucinations and thought broadcasting along with delusional paranoia and synesthesia. His speech displays perseveration and pressure.

command hallucination | delusion | flat affect | hallucination | perseveration | pressured speech | psychopathology | schizophrenia | thought broadcasting

Around the Bend

Warning: Reading this could spoil the film

A brief illustration of the value of AA to a man who appears to be recovering from heroin addiction and who, in following the last wishes of his father, finally admits to his own son that he was responsible for the physical abuse that left him crippled. The film addresses the impact of the deaths of the abused son's mother and grandfather, and his own father, the heroin addict, also dies in the end.

Alcoholics Anonymous | Bereavement | family secrets | heroin | Physical Abuse of a Child | recovery

Antonia's Line

A brute rapes a mentally retarded girl who later marries a man whom they call "Looney Lips" also portrayed as mentally retarded. A beloved man, the most learned in the town, although not quite wise enough, kills himself by protracted overdose of existentialist rumination followed by hanging.

mental retardation | suicide

Movie clips in presentations without the fear

I actually used a clip from the film Naked Lunch once in a hospital grand rounds presentation to a group of maybe 20 doctors. The doctors didn’t have to pay to get it, and I didn’t get paid for the presentation. I still own the VHS tape of the movie. Still I am convinced that someday, perhaps after an agent reads this post, I will hear a knock at the door, the FBI will arrest me, and I will be fined $50 billion dollars and sent to Club Fed for 1000 years with free health care but no possibility of parole. Sure, I could get my PCP to prescribe me some Prozac, but I believe that if I stop worrying about my eminent arrest for even a second, I will be jailed before I can click the post button.

Several years ago I decided to do this the legal way. With considerable difficulty and multiple phone calls I found I guy who sounded like some kind of broker who said he could get me permission to show a 30 second clip of some movie to another small group of doctors for $100, but the contract he promised to send never arrived.

It seems like plenty of people use movie clips in lectures. When I ask if they worry about prison, they usually describe a strategy that sounds like crossing fingers and hoping the FBI and the AG have bigger fish to fry.

Maybe so.

Seems like I should not have to worry about being sent to jail, especially when I may be helping promote the movies and maybe mental health and the war on drugs as well. Maybe I could prevent another death like Heath Ledger’s or Michael Jackson’s. It would make Hollywood look good.

The Apartment

Two women go to window ledges. One appears to have no intent to end her life. The other jumps, apparently because she has lost hope that she can have a relationship with the man she loves, but unbeknown to her he sees her and is almost pulled to his death rescuing her, thinking she is someone else. Is she really a pathological liar? Everyone seems to be stalking everyone, some with good intentions.

pathological liar | stalking | suicide

Seven Pounds

Warning: Reading this may spoil the experience of watching this film!

To assuage his guilt and redeem himself after causing the deaths of seven innocents, including his beloved wife, the protagonist kills himself with the sting of jellyfish in a bathtub full of ice after carefully arranging for donation of his organs to people selected as deserving.

bereavement | suicide | survivor guilt