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When Medicine Got it Wrong

When Medicine Got it Wrong MAIN

When Medicine Got it Wrong

Price: $320.00
Filmmaker Name: Katie Cadigan, Laura Murray
Film Length: 53 min
Film Year: 2009
Duration: 46-75 min
Decade: 2000s
Color: color
Sharing Discount has been applied

ABOUT

In 1974, a small group of parents became the first in the nation to publicly refuse blame for causing their children to have schizophrenia. They formed Parents of Adult Schizophrenics and their activism led to parents around the nation demanding changes in how the disease is understood and treated. 

Parents of Adult Schizophrenics waged their battles in an era when mental hospitals were shutting down and the most severely ill patients were turned over to the promise of community care. Yet that community care rarely materialized. 

When Medicine Got it Wrong shows how these families launched one of the fastest growing grassroots movements the nation had seen to date, ushering in an era of dramatic advances in understanding, treatment and brain research.  

Medicine now knows that recovery is possible, and happens for the vast majority who receive treatment. Most communities, however, still wrestle with mental healthcare policies based on debunked theories from the 1960s and '70s - pushing many with severe mental illness directly into homelessness or incarceration.

"We failed to understand why parents of a child with leukemia were treated with sympathy and understanding, while parents of a child with schizophrenia were treated with scorn and condemnation" -- Eve Oliphant, 1977 speech, World Congress of Psychiatry
"You could not run a business on the organizational and management structure of the mental health system" -- Tony Hoffman, 1978 testimony California State Legislature

CREDITS & INFO

SCREENINGS & AWARDS
120th Annual American Psychological Association Convention, USA, 2012
Anthropology Film Festival at UBC, Vancouver, Canada, 2010
NAMI National Convention, San Francisco, 2009
"Frames of Mind" Mental Health Film Series, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2009

TV Broadcasts
PBS broadcast, 2009
KQED broadcast, 2009

When Medicine Got it Wrong

Directed by 
Katie Cadigan
Laura C. Murray

Writing Credits
Katie Cadigan
Laura C. Murray

Produced by 
Katie Cadigan
Sam Karp

Cast
Gregory Bateson 
Anna Eshoo
Rita Moreno 
Ronald Reagan 

Music by 
William Susman

Cinematography by 
Tamara Goldsworthy

Film Editing by 
Laura C. Murray

Production Management 
Sandi Williams

Sound Department 
Doug Dunderdale
Lauretta Molitor
Paul James Zahnley

Camera and Electrical Department 
Katie Cadigan
Laura C. Murray

Editorial Department 
Marc Cabaniss
Stuart Ferreyra
Shirley Gutierrez

Music Department 
Stephen Hart
Joan Jeanrenaud
William Susman

Other crew 
Steven S. Deichen






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