I arrived at Sundance with a list of documentaries about traditional health issues. I quickly realized that so many of the films at the festival – documentaries and narratives – deal with “health” in its broadest sense. They may not be about a disease or a health policy issue, but they explore what it means to be fully human and fulfill dreams or encourage us to examine the many parts of ourselves. These too are important aspects of health. On the advice of Caroline Libresco, a programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, I expanded my documentary list to include narrative features and got a ticket for THE SURROGATE, a film by Ben Lewin starring Helen Hunt, John Hawkes and William H. Macy. THE SURROGATE is based on the true story of Mark O’Brien (played by John Hawkes) a poet and journalist who was confined to an iron lung and largely paralyzed after suffering polio as a child. At 38, he decides to lose his virginity with the help of a sex surrogate (Helen Hunt). It is a sweet and often funny portrayal of a man who, because of his condition and his upbringing, thought for many years he should not, or could not, have sex. With the help of a therapist, some supportive friends and most importantly, Helen Hunt’s sex surrogate character, he learns to fully inhabit his body and connect to others both physically and emotionally.

John Hawkes is incredible in his portrayal of Mark O’Brien. Hunt and Macy also give great performances. The movie has a lovely vibe, even if the pacing is a bit slow. It’s a rare chance (for many of us) to spend time with someone with such limited physical ability. Mark must lie horizontally at all times (he can’t sit up) – whether he’s home inside his iron lung or outside being pushed on a gurney.

The real Mark O’Brien wrote about losing his virginity in an article called “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” published in 1990. He passed away in 1999. An Academy-Award winning documentary about Mark, BREATHING LESSONS, was made by Jessica Yu. You can watch it in full (it’s 35 mins) on the Snag Films website. A video interview with SURROGATE’s director, Ben Lewin can be seen here. You’ll be able to see the film in theaters soon – it was picked up yesterday by Fox Searchlight Pictures, great news for the filmmakers and for audiences.

Senior Fellow Hannah Rosenzweig, MPH is in snowy Park City, Utah reporting on films at Sundance 2012 for the Center for Health, Media & Policy.

Tune in Thursday, January 25 at 11:00 PM to Healthstyles  wbai.org 99.5FM Pacifica Radio

How are decisions made about who is normal?

Barbara Glickstein interviews Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., a clinical and research psychologist; Fellow, Women and Public Policy Program, Kennedy School, and the Director of the Voices of Diversity Study based at the DuBois Institute at Harvard; author of 12 books, including When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans and They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal; and a playwright, actor, and director. She writes a blog for Psychology Today. Her websites are whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching, psychdiagnosis, and paulajcaplan.

Dr. Caplan is part of a growing movement of clinicians calling for Congressional hearings and a boycott of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 is now in preparation) because she stated,” that psychiatric diagnosis is not grounded in good science and causes a vast array of harm to people who have turned for alleviation of their suffering to those who are called helping professionals.”

Most recently, she has driven this point home with her impassioned work to address the current needs of returning soldiers and veterans. The diagnoses and treatment plans are not working. She is advocating for resources so that they can heal emotionally without using psychiatric labels or psychiatric drugs but for more access to nonpathologizing, low-risk approaches to war trauma. Her latest book addresses this issue, When Johnnie and Jane Come Marching Home: What All of Us Can Help Veterans. 

Elsevier Saunders Publisher

In the January 2012 issue of the American Journal of Nursing, the winners of the annual book awards were published. We are proud to announce that the American Journal of Nursing’s panel of judges awarded best text in community-public health to Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care edited by CHMP’s co-director Diana J. Mason, Judith K. Leavitt, and Mary W. Chaffe.

CHMP contributors to Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care include:

Co-director: Barbara Glickstein 

Senior Fellows: Jessie Daniels, David Keepnews, and Barbara Nichols

National Advisory Council members: Sally Cohen, Beverly Malone and Ellen-Marie Whelan

Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care was also reviewed by Marla E. Salmon, ScD, RN in the January 4, 2012  issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.  She writes, “While primarily intended for a nursing audience, the book offers value to any health professional who wants to shape health and health care through policy and the political process.” You can read the first 150 words of the full text without a subscription here.

Congratulations to all!

How to Survive a Plague uses mostly archival footage shot over years of ACT UP meetings, actions and demonstrations often by non-professional videographers. The result is a raw, in-the-moment film. The audience is transported to New York City in the 80’s where gay men were dying and nobody understood the disease or how to treat it. This coalition, many of whom were people living with AIDS, confronted city, state and federal government offices (including the FDA and the NIH) and demanded more funding and action around the disease. The group (a collection of young men and women from varied backgrounds) embarked on rigorous self-study of the sciences – virology, immunology, pharmacology – and wrote their own National AIDS Treatment Agenda. We see them take the agenda to Washington DC, to drug companies and conferences in riveting sequences of direct action outside offices and inside meeting rooms.

The cast and crew during Q&A after the premiere

How to Survive a Plague is a powerful example for activists today. There is much to learn from ACT UP about how to develop innovative and successful social justice movements around any issue. Director David France talks beautifully about why his film is a story for the ages: “One of my goals with the film was to position AIDS activism in the timeline of great civil rights movements, where it certainly belongs and for some reason hasn’t been inducted. So that’s what I wanted to do, the induction, and to show that like civil rights, like the apartheid struggle, it resonates with the human soul. You can identify with these people (the activists) in a fundamental human way. That’s what I mean when I say it’s a story for the ages. I think it should be remembered.”

Everyone should see this masterful and beautiful film. I was honored to be at the premiere where many of the living ACT UP activists in the film joined the Q&A. The film will be released shortly – hopefully in theaters and on TV.

Senior Fellow Hannah Rosenzweig, MPH is in snowy Park City, Utah reporting on films at Sundance 2012 for the Center for Health, Media & Policy.

We meet Dr. Dean Ornish at his Preventive Medicine Institute in California and learn about his research into how lifestyle changes may reverse heart disease and early cancer. He spent almost two decades trying to convince Medicare to pay for his lifestyle programs and finally succeeded a few years ago (read an article about it here). Dr. Andrew Weil is training physicians in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona. In his model, patients and providers are partners in the healing process. We see this come to life in several scenes in the film as Dr. Erin Martin, a primary care physician, works with patients at community health centers in Oregon. These are just a few examples of programs the film explores. Other interviewees include Shannon Brownlee, medical journalist, Dr. Steven Nissan of the Cleveland Clinic and General David Fridovich of the US Special Forces, among others.

I’m eager to follow Escape Fire as it moves out into the world. What role will it play in the many efforts to reform our broken system? How will it help generate conversations and move us towards action and impact? The film did generate a lively post-screening discussion where audience members couldn’t wait to share their own health (or health care) stories to the panel and assembled crowd. For more info read the Variety Review.

Senior Fellow Hannah Rosenzweig, MPH is in snowy Park City, Utah reporting on films at Sundance 2012 for the Center for Health, Media & Policy.

credit/imperfectwomen

Can reality TV challenge media stereotypes and address the social biases people living with depression and anxiety disorders face? Stereotypes about people are common in main-stream media and can be off the charts on reality television, which is a dominating force on television.  I’ve sat watching some reality TV, and I confess, I am not fun to watch them with, just ask my kids. As a media person, I think it’s important to check them out occasionally to critique them to evaluate what messages they’re selling.  I tried to watch Jersey Shore once, I didn’t last more than 10 minutes. Imagining that Jersey Shore would take on the issue of mental illness was pretty surprising.

For those of you not familiar with MTV‘s  show Jersey Shore, it’s a series that follows eight housemates spending their summer in New Jersey.  In the most recent episode, “Jersey Shore” member Vinny Guadagnino walked out of the house after a bout of anxiety.  He announced that he has left the show because of his depression and anxiety, and launched a campaign to assist those with mental health issues. He’s penned a book that will be released in April, Control the Crazy: My Plan to Stop Stressing, Avoid Drama and Maintain Your Inner Cool . He’s also launched a website.

Check out this article in AlterNet by Krystie Yandoli,  “Jersey Shore” — Mouthpiece for Mental Health Problems? She raises the question of its potential impact on the audience of Jersey Shore viewers, a show with record-breaking ratings that reached almost 9 million viewers in their third season.

The Kaiser Family Foundation published a report, “The Reality of Health: Reality Television and the Public Health.”  The report was published in 2006 – and suggested that the impact of health messages in reality television programming is complex and confusing and requires further studies.  Six years later there’s significantly more reality TV programming. It’s here to stay. Someone will have to take this on. Who’s going to take on 1000s of hours of viewing to study the health issues it addresses and their public health implications? It’s won’t be me but I am most curious about the findings.

I saw Iron Lady, on opening day in NYC.  What has stayed with me, in addition to the brilliant performance by Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is how artistically sensitive the issue of dementia was addressed. The screenplay was written by Abi Morgan and directed by  Phyllida Lloyd.   We meet the character Prime Minister Thatcher in her late 80s as she struggles with her aging, changing times and clearing out the belongings of her husband who recently died. Her day-to-day activities and diminishing public schedule is managed closely by her staff and daughter, who mean well, of course, as all of us do when trying to manage an elder facing dementia. This delicate balance of respecting their dignity and protecting them from harm  is a very thin line you often easily cross.

Her fears create a tension that is relieved for her (and this viewer) by visits/hallucinations by her husband Denis played by Jim Broadbent. When memories get triggered for Ms. Thatcher he arrives to stand by her side with a dance, a drink, some silly humor and unconditional love. This visual hallucination functions to keep her grounded and survive. She is a woman living on the edge –  intact enough cognitively to have that terrifying understanding that her dementia is progressing. There were many issues dealt with in Iron Lady, including women and power, grieving the death of a spouse, but for now I am seeped in reflecting on how it showed a woman facing dementia.

My 87 year old mother is living with mild dementia. I don’t know if she has ever experienced hallucinations but after seeing this film I plan on talking to her about it. I know she plans on seeing this film. I wonder what her take will be on how dementia was portrayed. We’ll talk about it and I hope it helps me better understand what she is living with.

Renata’s post can be found on HEI’s Health Equity Exchange.

Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN, Rudin Professor of Nursing; Co-Director, CHMP

From The Blue Room: www.theblueroomblog.org

This week’s Healthstyles program focuses on the use of the arts to promote health and healing. I interview three people who have been engaged in this work in the NYC metropolitan region: Joy Jacobson, Poet-in-Resident and Senior Fellow at the Center for Health, Media & Policy (CHMP) at Hunter College, City University of New York; Jim Stubenrauch, CHMP Senior Fellow; and Diane Kaufman, MD, poet and child psychiatrist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)– University Behavioral HealthCare at Newark, NJ, where she is also the Director of Creative Arts Healthcare.  The three discuss various forms of art that are used with patients and clinicians to foster self-healing, as well as a collaborative project on narrative writing with nurses at UMDNJ. The program airs this week on WXMR-FM (Radio Bistro at www.wxmrfm.com; 100.7 FM) and on WBAI-FM (www.wbai.org; 99.5 FM in NYC on Thursday night from 11:00 to 11:30 PM). To listen to the program, click here: Arts UMDNJ.

Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN, Co-Director, CHMP