In a message dated 1/7/02 5:49:45 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >I think that this film does not begin to catch the true pain and horror >of paranoid schizophrenia. Nash comes off as an arrogant, albeit lovable quirky >kinda guy with a penchant for newsprint wallpaper and string art. It doesn't >begin to capture the mean and vicious persona that emerges when paranoid >schizophrenia is in full bloom.
This depresses me. Schizophrenia is a terrible illness. I hate it when such things are sanitized. It just confirms the cynical adage that normal people can't handle very much reality. The reality of schizophrenia is people in jail (mentally ill people are put in jail quite often), on the street, perhaps in the hospital, or living in some sort of sheltered situation, quite possibly on disability. Few people, at least in the throes of a significant episode, can cope much better than this. Just see E. Fuller Torrey's Surviving Schizophrenia or Carol North's autobiography, Welcome Silence. One of the highest-functioning persons with schizophrenia I know of is Frederick Frese, and he's had problems too. He's got an article on coping with schizophrenia: http://www.mentalhealth.com/story/p52-sc04.html he says that "For those of us who have returned and have found that we are not as welcome as we would like to be, we have a challenge. We must work together to change the image we have with those in what I sometimes refer to as the "the chronically normal community." As more and more of us are becoming open about the nature of our disability, we have an obligation to share with others as much as we can about mental illness so that there is less fear and greater understanding and acceptance." I really don't see how sanitized movies help achieve that goal. Mary K People hurry by so quickly Don't they hear the melodies In the chiming and the clicking And the laughing harmonies - Joni Mitchell
