What do you think about "Mental"?

I'm really thrilled that mental illnesses are finding their way into mainstream entertainment – Broadway Theatre and especially television.

Two examples are the rock musical Next to Normal – which won three Tony Awards last Sunday – and the new television series Mental.

Here are some random thoughts...

When Alice Ripley won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical on Sunday night, I was over the moon with excitement.

Perhaps that means that "Next to Normal" will continue its Broadway run, at least until mid-September. On Tuesday, fresh from watching the Tonys on television, my psychiatrist Dr. Bob and I were discussing this groundbreaking rock musical about a suburban housewife with drug-resistant bipolar disorder attempting to cope with her life, family and hallucinations. It feels more like an opera with so many traumatic moments viscerally exposing how mental illness reverberates within a family and expressed in song. 

Ripley is in 24 of the show's 32 musical numbers.  

It wasn't hard to convince Dr. Bob to trip down to New York for an artistic weekend to see this show and the new Tony Award-winning Best Play, "God of Carnage".

Between those two corporeal crawls through the innards of contemporary coupledom – in Normal, the circle broadens to include kids – a psychiatrist, especially mine with his psychoanalytic bent, can't avoid having the time of his life.

He seemed convinced and I can't wait to discuss his take on these two plays.

According to a terrific story about Ripley in last Sunday's New York Times, after every performance, she is mobbed at the stage door by a gang of admirers, "and one out of five people ... is bipolar. I meet them every night," she said. 

In researching the role of Diana Goodman, Ripley read extensively about depression and psychopharmacology, she said in the New York Times interview. She also relied on a favourite uncle and her personal assistant as real-life resources. Both are diagnosed with bipolar disorders.

Ripley makes a striking and hopeful analysis of her onstage persona – which is why this show deserves to run for a very long time. Even Sir Elton John clearly stated this when accepting his Tony for "Billy Elliot" as Best Musical on Sunday night. 

"I started by thinking of Diana as someone with a disorder and I look at her now, and there's nothing wrong with her. I think that tells me I'm on the inside."

No matter how anyone reacts to this show, I think it's a healthy and hopeful portrayal of a woman realistically struggling with her bipolar disorder diagnosis as it's handled by mainstream medical approaches. It's controversial and gets people talking – gives them the freedom and the courage to open up more than they did before seeing the show, or reading about it. 

It's liberating. Those of us who have ever felt marginalized and negatively stereotyped can see ourselves in this character and in other characters in this show, indirectly affected when someone close to us is grappling with a serious and complicated psychiatric problem. 

This show is also contributing to the public discourse about emotional trauma as it relates to the development of a psychiatric illness. It calls into question the way we, in North America, perceive mental illnesses and/or mental disorders.

Are they "brain diseases" or "emotional disorders"? Or both? Are they chronic diseases or can you recover?

These are not yet mainstream ideas because a long-standing yet incorrect "assumption" – that mental illnesses are rooted in brain chemistry – is generally accepted as true in the medical mainstream. It is not. There is no scientific proof yet. This is an increasingly debated issue.

No one knows for sure the causes of mental and/or emotional disorders. They are varied and differ with each individual. Causes can include genetic, intrauterine, biochemical, environmental, social, cultural, and psychological factors – or a combination of them.

And people do recover from severe mental illnesses. I'm one of them. 

Meanwhile, on the home entertainment front, my husband and I have been watching a new summer replacement every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. carried on Global and produced by Fox Telecolombia called Mental.

This show, shot in Bogota, Columbia is being vigourously debated among bloggers and others online and elsewhere, I'm sure. It's highly unrealistic, but dramatically intriguing. And also encourages people to start publicly discussing mental health issues more openly. In essence, it's helping to normalize mental illnesses and health issues, and it's broadening the public discourse. 

It has people talking.

Here's what I like about Mental.

It's lead psychiatrist – a terrifically appealing character named Dr. Jack Gallagher played by British-born actor Chris Vance – is highly unconventional. 

Gallagher is always getting himself into hot water in the mental ward of the L.A. general hospital where he's recently been hired.

He's obviously modelled on Dr. Gregory House played by Hugh Laurie in the multiple award-winning House, M.D., also carried on Fox – but with a more engaging personality. Gallagher is a creative and unorthodox problem-solver with a team of young shrinks-in-training assisting him with his bizarre cases.

Normal, run-of-the-mill people with diagnoses of psychosis, severe depression, bipolar disorders, anxiety or schizophrenia are rarely the focus of each weekly segment, which ends with a solution. How conveniently and conventionally "Hollywood"!

It would be nice if real-life patients received this supremely specialized care instead of the cookie-cutter treatment most of us receive when we're hospitalized and even as outpatients. In Canada, all-too-often, it's the proverbial "15-minute consult and a prescription."

Nevertheless, for once, psychiatric patients are not depicted as villains and murderers, but complex individuals, human beings, with reasons for why they may be acting out or catatonic and solutions for their potential recovery. This is a huge step forward for a mass-market television show. It's far from perfect, but it's hopeful.

And it's too early to tell. Next week's segment involves a young boy with bipolar disorder. 

Why not tune in and have a look. Give me your critique. Share your ideas and what you think. Do you hate this show like the very popular Philadelphia mental health blogger Liz Spikol? 

Or do you like it. Share your reasons.

Let's discuss it!

Comments

[NiroZ]

I haven't actually seen it, but I've heard that even though it doesn't stereotypical person, the mental illness itself is stereotyped. Just like with Kate Perry, not every mention is a good mention.

[Sandy Naiman]

Hi NiroZ,

I am fascinated by your ability to comment so effortlessly on Broadway shows and now television shows that you have not seen. This is a very special talent and I applaud you. I wouldn't have the nerve to do it. ;-)

As for the substance of your comment, let me say that this is a show that's definitely more fiction than fact. Far from realistic.

Never, in all my numerous experiences as an in-patient in four different psychiatric wards and hospitals in Toronto have I encountered characters like those in "Mental" – or for that matter, patients with the often outrageous diagnoses and problems depicted on that show.

However, this is TV drama. Larger than life. Rather silly. But, it's interesting and it doesn't put me to sleep, as most television does these days. So, I'll keep watching until it does. Or it becomes so silly as to be laughable.

Will it ever become more than a summer replacement?

Probably not. But it's a start. Perhaps a more realistic, provocative and insightful TV show about psychiatry will evolve from it. Or better still, a show about people, like me, in recovery. I applaud the writers for portraying the drug companies in a way that matches the headlines I'm reading in the mainstream press.

As for people, like me, in recovery, we are not all angry, anti-psychiatry or anti-drugs. But we're open to all kinds of other tools to help us live meaningful lives.

And you know what? A show like that would be a real breakthrough. I suspect that will happen, too. "United States of Tara" is certainly a more honest, accurate and respectful TV "treatment" show about a woman, a suburban housewife and artist, living ad coping with a challenging mental illness – in this case dissociative identity disorder. If you haven't seen it, you should.

Thanks for initiating this discussion. I received an infuriated comment on Facebook from a friend who absolutely detests Mental. I wish she had commented here, but she did not.

Too bad.

Take care.
sln