Newly minted pastor Ed Stetzer, writing in CNN.beliefnet, writes of his dealings with a man in his congregation. This person would often disappear for days at a time, and later Stetzer would hear that the fellow had spent hours praying the psalms. Later the man killed himself, leading Stetzer to reflect of aproaches churches could use to better engage parishioners with mental illness.

This led Spetzer to reflect on the kinds of practices that would lead to better acceptance of persons with mental illness. One of these is to view the church community as a refuge, as a place of welcome or safety. It is intriguing that the meaning of the word "asylum"—which not has such a negative connotation—means safe place or sanctuary.

President Barack Obama made headlines with his proposal to encourage American scientists to work toward understanding the great mysteries of the brain. Done as a massive project, this could rival past collective enterprises such as Getting a Man to the Moon; when President Kennedy suggested this, it took everyone's breath away. It looked unattainable in the early 1960s. But the country did it.

The new project has garnered unusual bipartisan support.

Since the Greek philosophers there has always been great interest in the brain. St. Thomas Aquinas believed it was necessary but not sufficient for human consciousness. Descartes believed there was an interaction between the brain and the soul: melding somewhere in the pineal gland.

Many other philosophers have speculated that consciousness is a byproduct of the brain itself and concluded that we are the products of the natural forces we are comprised of. As such, our lives our determined by the forces of chemistry, biology, genetics, and past experience.

This is the thirteenth of twenty-one films in the series on psychiatry in film. The plot summary is provided by Judd Blaise Rovi.

New Zealand poet Janet Frame is the subject of Jane Campion's biographical drama, which presents a poetically evocative look at the author's turbulent life.

The film begins with Frame's childhood, showing her as a bright but odd-looking, chubby, emotionally fragile, and isolated girl with a flair for writing. Frame faces difficulty in adapting to the conventional rural life around her, and her social awkwardness only worsens as she grows older.

I feel unusually close to The Snake Pit, personally, if not intimately and daily, working with one of the writers, Millen Brand, during my early days in book publishing. This, the tenth film out of twenty-one in the AMHF series, required significant research from the filmmakers in adapting an autobiographical novel by Jane Ward.

The Snake Pit, which won an Academy Award and was nominated in a number of categories, was released at that special period, the postwar era, when interest in the social dimension of hellish-personal mental anguish peaked: what Fromm, in another context, characterized as a striving for "the sane society."

Specific to AMHF, the movie was released the year Dr. Stefan de Schill accepted the position of director of research. This is a second reason I feel close to the film.

Of the twenty-one films for discussion on this Web site, here is number six, which stars Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher in signature roles.

Thus is the plot, in slightly condensed form, from Wikipedia:

In 1963, Randle Patrick "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson)—a recidivist anti-authoritarian criminal serving a sentence on an Oregon-prison farm for statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old girl—is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Although he does not exhibit overt signs of mental illness, he hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the remainder of his sentence in a more relaxed hospital environment.

This is the fifth of twenty-one films in the AMHF series of blogs. Charly is a controversial film, about mental retardation and psychiatry. The central controversy revolves around the question, "What is a human being?" Are individuals challenged by developmental delays "to be cured?" Are they not soulful, "whole individuals"? What would be the role of psychiatry in such a scenario?

The title character, Charlie Gordon, is sensitively played by the late Cliff Robertson, who won an Oscar for this role. Charlie works at a low-level job in a bakery and lives alone in a run-down room somewhere in Boston. He is the object of pranks at the bakery, and the only good thing in his life is his caseworker, likewise compassionately portrayed by Claire Bloom. The caseworker is earning her Ph.D. in conjunction with a young man, whom we never meet, set to be her husband.

In the recent yearly "Reports of the Association" issue of the American Psychologist (December 2011), the American Psychological Association announced "Practice Guidelines Regarding Psychologists' Involvement in Pharmacological Issues." This report notes several factors that will make psychologists more involved in medication-management issues. One survey noted that the number of Americans using antidepressants increased from 6.7 percent in 1990 to 15.1 percent in 1998. Another study indicates that psychologists reported that 43 percent of their patients were using psychotropic medications. In two states, Louisiana and New Mexico, as well as the US Military, psychologists who have been "appropriately trained" are able to prescribe medications.

The task force that came up with this report noted that there is a continuum among psychologists concerning how involved each is with regard to psychopharmacological issues. This article notes three particular points on the continuum for psychologist involvement in psychopharmacology. First, the group of psychologists with actual prescriptive authority (a small, but growing group). Second, psychologists who actively participate in medication decision-making, such as by offering a consultative recommendation about a class of medicines or even a particular medicine to someone (physician, nurse practitioner), retain the legal responsibility for prescribing. Third, psychologists who provide information that may be relevant to pharmacotherapy decision makers, such as referring someone for a medication evaluation or discussing with patients how to address medication concerns with their prescriber. Following are some of the ideas the Task Force came up with.

In addition to the seventeen films related to psychiatry posted on this blog, I have been reminded of four others (though technically, one of the four is a series):

Crime Doctor (1943; series 1940s)

An Angel at My Table (1990)

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

The Bell Jar (rescheduled 2013?)

In future postings, we will examine each of the twenty-one movies recommended.

The following is based on interviews with Alexandra Styron.

I first met Alexandra Styron at a reading of her new book, Reading My Father: A Memoir (Scribner, 2011). She was appearing at the Quogue Public Library on Long Island. It was one of those beautiful midsummer afternoons that remind one so much of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady: "Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." Mind you, we were not having tea, but the genteel setting on the green sward of library lawns, with the sun's rays dipping and making shadows, brought James to mind: "the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf."

Despite the sense of pleasure at seeing the great William Styron's daughter, the "shadows on the perfect lawn" adumbrated, as in James, "the shadows of an old man" having his tea as the day lengthened. Something about the coming darkness in the midst of summer sun becomes a leitmotif for father and daughter.

I came across this memoir (with its compelling title, somewhat reminiscent of the work of Clarice Lispector) upon learning its author, Carol Hebald, had been awarded (six years before) the same fellowship I had been given as an undergraduate. The foreword is by iconoclast Thomas Stephen Szasz, known for his anti-traditional "anti-views" of psychotherapy. In The Heart Too Long Suppressed, (2001), Hebald writes of a chilling pattern of childhood abuse among several individuals close to her; about her dissociation from reality; and about her self-willed, up-by-the-bootstraps recovery. Here is a controversial book. In this connection, it is worth noting that The Bell Jar, by "Victoria Lucas" (who, of course, is Sylvia Plath) is scheduled for reinterpretation on the silver screen in 2012.

The directors and staff of AMHF have discussed a blog, or series of more in-depth blogs, related to films featuring mental health as a central theme.

Most of the following seventeen Hollywood movies from various eras (and therefore reflecting their respective times), as well as in a range of genres, include psychiatrists, "mental-health physicians"/neurologists/psychiatric neurologists, or clinical psychologists.

In 1953, the year the Rosenbergs were convicted in the electric chair, Esther Greenwood (a.k.a. Elly Higginbottom), poet Sylvia Plath's alter ego (further complicating the picture, Plath wrote under the pen name "Victoria Lucas"), underwent electroshock therapy. Electricity, neurological connections, high-strung emotion, madness, suicide (which the real-life Plath committed ten years after the setting of The Bell Jar), hidden identity, social invisibility, and the conventions of the overachieving "good college girl" trying to understand the male ego are all part of this disturbing autobiographical novel. I highly recommend it, whether you have never read it, or have not in a long time, as in my case.

Of the twenty-one films referenced in this blog related to the subject of psychology via Hollywood, after a (too-)long wait, here is number 6, starring Jack Nicholson in his quintessential role, along with Louise Fletcher, in chilling role as a mental-health-facility nurse.

Condensed from Wikipedia, thus is the plot:

In 1963 Oregon, Randle Patrick "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a recidivist anti-authoritarian criminal serving a short sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old girl, is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Although he does not show any overt signs of mental illness, he hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the rest of his sentence in a more relaxed hospital environment.

McMurphy's ward is run by steely, unyielding Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who employs subtle humiliation, unpleasant medical treatments and a mind-numbing daily routine to suppress the patients. McMurphy finds that they are more fearful of Ratched than they are focused on becoming functional in the outside world. McMurphy establishes himself immediately as the leader among several characters (mostly played by well-known or soon-to-be-well-known actors), among them his fellow patient Billy"Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson), a silent American Indian believed to be deaf and mute.

McMurphy and Ratched's battle of wills escalates rapidly. McMurphy steals a hospital bus, herds his colleagues aboard; they begin to feel faint stirrings of self-determination.

Soon after, however, McMurphy learns that Ratched and the doctors have the power to keep him committed indefinitely. Sensing a rising tide of insurrection among the group, Ratched tightens her grip on everyone. Following one of her group-humiliation sessions, sent up to the "shock shop" for ECT. While McMurphy and the Chief wait their turn, McMurphy offers Chief a piece of gum, and Chief murmurs "Thank you." McMurphy is delighted to find that Bromden is neither deaf nor mute, and that he stays silent to deflect attention. After the electroshock therapy, McMurphy shuffles back onto the ward feigning illness, before humorously animating his face and loudly greeting his fellow patients, assuring everyone that the ECT only charged him up all the more and that the next woman to take him on will "light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars."

But the struggle with Ratched is taking its toll, and with his release date no longer a certainty, McMurphy plans an escape. He phones Candy to bring her friend Rose (Louisa Moritz) and some booze to the hospital late one night. They enter through a window after McMurphy bribes the night orderly, Mr. Turkle (Scatman Crothers). McMurphy and Candy invite the patients into the day room for a Christmas party; the group breaks into the drug locker, puts on music, and enjoys a bacchanalian rampage. At the end of the night, McMurphy and Bromden prepare to climb out the window.

Nurse Ratched arrives the next morning and discovers the scene: the war upended and patients passed out all over the floor. She orders the attendants to lock the window, clean up, and conduct a head count. McMurphy, enraged at Nurse Ratched, chokes her nearly to death until an orderly knocks him out.

Some time later, Nurse Ratched, still recovering from the neck injury sustained during McMurphy's attack, wears a neck brace and speaks in a thin, reedy voice. The patients pass a whispered rumor that McMurphy dramatically escaped the hospital rather than being taken "upstairs."

Late that night, Chief Bromden sees McMurphy being escorted back to his bed, and initially believes that he has returned so they can escape together, which he is now ready to do since McMurphy has made him feel "as big as a mountain." However, when he looks closely at McMurphy's unresponsive face, he is horrified to see lobotomy scars on his forehead. Unwilling to allow McMurphy to live in such a state—or be seen this way by the other patients—the chief smothers McMurphy to death with his pillow. He then carries out McMurphy's escape plan by lifting the hydrotherapy console off the floor and hurling the massive fixture through a grated window, climbing through and running off into the distance, with Taber waking up just in time to see the Chief escape and cheering as the others awake.