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I recently saw "Benny and Joon" for the first time. The woman, Joon, is "mentally ill," but her illness is not given a specific label (though by diagnostic criteria, it seems like it might be schizophrenia). I have also seen "A Beautiful Mind," which is based upon the life of John Nash, a man with schizophrenia. Then there's "Girl, Interrupted," about a young woman with borderline personality disorder, and "Rain Man," about a man with autism, and his brother.

My question is this: What other movies are there that portray mental illness or brain disorders? How accurate do you think their portrayal is? We all know that the media influences public opinion quite a bit, even if they know it's fictionalized. What is your opinion of this?

As for "Rain Man," I do not know anyone as severly affected with autism as Dustin Hoffman's character, so I'm not sure how accurate this portrayal is. I do appreciate the movie for calling more attention to autism, but there are things about it that frustrate me. Because it's the only well known "autism movie," people assume all autistics are like the character in this film, when autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning individuals vary greatly in their ability to function, and the autistic traits they display. People also assume that all autistics are lightning calculators when the truth is, only a minority of autistics are savants.

I've seen "A Beautiful Mind" and read John Nash's biography by the same name. One change they made in the movie is his medications. In real life, his rehabilitation only happened after he went off his medications. The movie producers changed that so as to not encourage people to go off their meds.

I've heard of two movies that depict Schizophrenia that I have not yet seen. One is called "Tarnation" and one is called "See Grace Fly." Let me know if anybody has seen them!

Another movie that depicts mental illness is a movie called "House of Cards." It's very good. It's about a little girl who develops an illness that seems to be Autism, although I don't think they name it as such. Her mother goes to great lengths to try to enter the world of her daughter. It's very touching, though not realistic as the girl appears to suddenly be "cured" at one point.

I thought A Beautiful Mind was very good but I was less impressed with Girl Interrupted. Sure, I love the movie but I don't think it gave an accurate portrayal. If you read the book then you'll see that the characters aren't like they were in the film. Hollywood beefed them up, made them more extreme, weirder, it was almost like they wanted to take away the feautres that would make it easier for "normal" people to relate to them. The worst though in terms of innacurate portrayals was Lisa. In the book she's a bit of a handful sometimes who liked to get a reaction out of people and showed a bit of a disregard for the rules both of the ward and society but she was a sweetie really. There was no hint of the malicious murdering psychopath that's in the film.

Good film nonetheless but read the book too because its way better.

Donnie Darko is a good film about schizophrenia, if not a little confusing. Not an accurate portrayal of your average schizophrenic but still good.

Then there's my favourite film, pi. I'm not quite sure whats wrong with him but there's definately something. Its a great film if you want lots of things to think about, it covers religion, maths, nature, the stock market, lots of things. The anguish of mental illness is pretty well presented and the soundtrack is great to boot.

I really enjoyed the movie K-Pax. From the trailers and all, you may just think it's a sci-fi flick, but a great deal of it actually takes place in a mental hospital. The main character is either an alien, or a delusional, amnesiac savant who's really good at escaping from mental hospitals. According to my girlfriend (my personal "expert" in these cases) it provides a fairly accurate protrayal of mental hospital life. Kevin Spacey has some cool lines, too. "I would say you're in need of a thorazine drip, Doctor."

I also liked Donnie Darko, but as far as I recall, there was very little in it that actually had to do with his mental illness, other than his visits to the therapist and the mention of pills. His problems really came from the whole time warp/alternate universe deal he got mixed up in. That movie still confuses me. sweatdrop

Donnie Darko is a movie with mental illness. Im not sure what illness but it involves seeing a 6foot tall demonic bunny rabbit, telling Donnie to kill people and burn down peoples houses, which he does because he doesnt want Frank, the bunny, to leave because donnie doesnt want to be alone and wants to find out things about life with the help of Frank.......

I dunno. They kept doing it for quite a while, I think. It seems like they thought "Hmm... maybe if we electricute them, they're brains will work okay again". *A few electricutions later* "Oh... it seems that just kills them. But now we don't have to take care of them. Lets continue!"

indeed that is true...but these days they have ALOT more control and the patients have a choice to do it or not...

few decades ago some mental institutions would but patients in an induced coma n give them shock therapy without consent from the patient

Yes, they did that to my great-grandmother!



Yep, lobotomies were once used to treat all manner of mental-illness and more. They treated psychosis like that until recently. It was only outlawed in the U.S. in the '70s, and not because of some sort of public outrage. Nope, it was because they were happy to give it up when they started using drugs that produced the same result. Anti-psychotics act like chemical lobotomies.

http://www.lobotomy.info/adventures.html