New, HBO: 'A Dangerous Son' Documentary (2018)

[appalachiablue]

- NPR, "The Struggle of Finding Help for "A Dangerous Son," May 6, 2018
'A Dangerous Son,' which premiers Monday, focuses on three families who are dealing with the simultaneous challenges of handling children prone to lashing out while looking for treatment that is not always available.
"I don't know how to control my anger," 10-year old Ethan says in one clip. Ethan, now 16, is one of the film's subjects. His mom, Stacy Shapiro says he struggles with autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, intermittent explosive disorder and anxiety. His aggressive behavior started between ages 2 and 3, she says... https://www.npr.org/2018/05/06/608833599/the-struggle-of-finding-help-for-a-dangerous-son

- The Guardian, "The Stigma is Overwhelming: Documentary Investigates America's Mental Health Crisis," May 7, 2018
Oscar-nominated film-maker Liz Garbus’s new documentary examines the difficulties of raising children with psychiatric disorders and why we need more empathy for their mothers-
In 1955, the number of mentally ill Americans in public psychiatric hospitals peaked at 560,000. Since then, that number has been in sharp decline: as a result of deinstitutionalization and the broad transfer of mental health funding from the federal government to states, people – especially children – living with psychiatric disorders and emotional disturbances have fallen through the cracks.

<Nature or nurture: unravelling the roots of childhood behaviour disorders>

Liz Garbus’s new HBO documentary, A Dangerous Son, puts this crisis and the country’s inadequate response in sharp focus. Through the lens of three mothers whose sons suffer from mental illness, the documentary chronicles in intimate, often painful detail the roadblocks families face in securing treatment, as well as the effects of a dismantled and under-resourced apparatus for psychiatric care in the US. From 2009 to 2012, states slashed funding for mental health services by $5bn while the country got rid of almost 10% of its public psychiatric hospital beds. As the author Andrew Solomon says in the film: “There is the sense that rehabilitation is a luxury.”..https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/07/liz-garbus-a-dangerous-son-documentary-mental-health-crisis

[Tobin S.]

1. Kids like that usually end up in jail.

Some states will give them treatment for mental illness there, but others will not from what I understand. I live in Indiana. According to my wife who took criminal justice classes in college, they don't give prisoners mental health treatment here. We have a county jail in our town and we have a scanner. There are sometimes paramedic and law enforcement calls from the jail for suicide attempts and other violent behavior.

The U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other nation- over 2.3 million currently.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html

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2. Prison and jail is where most disturbed youth and adults are held I know.

The US prison industrial complex is a horror and the mental health system is tragic, practically defunct or barely adequate except for high end private care perhaps. I know a friend's relative in Fla. who was "bakered" as a teen there in school in the 1970s for having 3 MJ seeds in her bag. She was confined for observation in a psych unit with seriously disturbed patients for 72 hours before release, a frightening and unnecessary experience that remains.

In the film the children of the three families profiled were in Ca., Wa. (Seattle) and Colorado, and the state and area make a substantial difference in options. The film also includes some of the tragic story of Va. politician Creigh Deeds (D). In 2013 his teen son became aggressive and violent; Deeds tried but could not find an available bed in the state for his safety and treatment. Deeds son ended up stabbing him, and then taking his own life.

[Tobin S.]

3. Yep, mental health care in this country is not adequate.

For even severe disturbances, most insurance companies won't okay a stay longer than 7 days in a hospital. They sober them up for a week, pump them full of psychiatric medication, and then kick them back out on the street. Repeat indefinitely. We have a state hospital here for long term care, but those are people who have long been criminally insane. It's more like a prison.

I think the decline in long term care came with the rise of modern psychiatric drugs along with states looking to cut costs. This is a bad area to be cheap on policy.

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4. Close monitoring of people's time in facilities is in the film too, cost cutting.

Also that Medicaid only covers so many days. It's essentially some treatment, lotsa meds and then back out, as you say with insurance. The demise of institutions initially well meant began in the 1960s according to the film yet I know a lot was under Reagan in the 1980s. No lasting substitute networks of community support services and centers were ever established either as originally planned. So much focus went to 'biochemical causes' hence many pharmaceuticals in the last 25 years...

People better be very well off anymore to live decently in the US. You don't want to get sick here, heaven knows!

Kudos to the Moms in the film dealing so well with limited resources requiring real strength and patience. And they had it. Their boys were very dear too.

[appalachiablue]

5. To add, a better title- something like 'A Troubled Son'

would suffice, to stay away from stigmatizing language especially given conditions in this country now.