One of the two opening films, at the 35th Mill Valley Film Festival, was Silver Linings Playbook. Both the director/screenwriter, David O. Russell and lead actor, Bradley Cooper, were available for the post screening Q & A. Silver Linings Playbook is about people with manic depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, situational depression and stigmatization. The work is adapted from Matthew Quick's comic novel. The alternative publishing origins underpin the well sculpted traits of the film's characters. Did I mention it is a comedy? In fact, to be more specific, albeit a 21st century version, its genre is musical comedy. Think of Tracy and Hepburn doing Singing in the Rain.
Gotta talk about the performances on this one. Pat Jr. (Bradley Cooper) gives one of the most convincing ranges of a person with mental illness that I have ever seen and as a clinician of thirty years, I've seen a lot. Robert De Niro (Pat Sr.) follows closely in Cooper's wake. Jennifer Lawrence, pops out of her role as Mystique/Raven (X-Men) seamlessly into the just this side of psychotic -perfect match for Pat Jr. They make what could have been a small domestic comedy a full contender.
There are eight major characters and three of them are people of color: Chris Tucker, John Ortiz and Anupam Kher. These roles brilliantly link the mentally ill to other disparities in health and their risks. Anupam Kher's role raises great questions about reverse transference, where the therapist sees himself in his sports loving client. Kher as a psychiatrist may step over some traditional boundaries and Pat Jr. joins him. One might argue that Russell was following the lead of the source material on the ethnic distribution, however many writers and directors don't. Russell says that he followed the talent in his casting choices. I give him credit for even more than that in this many ways progressive film.
By subtly magnifying simple behaviors in the main characters, viewers begin to realize that mental illness is just one extreme of the human range of function for family, friends and neighbors. With conservative estimates being that 22 million Americans are affected by mental illness annually, the refreshing view of this film is not "the mentally ill are among us," but instead, "the mentally ill are us." There is only one person in the film who you can't diagnose and it's because she is a device. She has virtually no spoken lines and shows up only as a Mrs. Colombo or Maris Crane cameo.
Bioethicists have been closely linked to providing guidelines protecting persons with mental illness who may also have poor decision making capacity. Without decisional capacity, there can be no informed consent. However, assessing decisional capacity may be difficult for those who do not often use stringent organized tools for doing so. Worsening matters; the higher the risk the more stringent the informed consent should be. For instance, in placebo trials, people have to understand that they may or may not get an effective drug as a placebo in the control or experimental arm of a study. This understanding can occur but not likely in a five minute informed consent procedure provided for most subjects or patients.
The task of the clinician and research team is to determine whether the potential subject has a level of health literacy to understand complex concepts. Every day practice improves decisional capacity. Even the prescribing of an aspirin should have an attendant disclosure for the drug and assessment of decisional capacity and remedy for its absence. The patient gets practice with the small things but so does the clinician. When the big things, like cancer, pop up at least everyone knows the playing field of informed consent, mental ill or not.
Sometimes, there is a question when mental illness is decompensated simultaneous with high risk problems but intermediate urgency calling for a rapid decision. (It's an easy call if there is a life threatening emergency - error on the side of life and sort it out later; unless an advance directive prohibits such action.) State by state in the USA, there are protections and rules in place which generally take matters out of the hands of clinicians, as well as the person who is mentally ill. Generally, these rules are a part of the probate court system in the form of conservator, temporary or permanent, or other proxy for making decisions.
As is the case with the main character of Silver Linings Playbook, Pat Jr., there is an historical precedent for stigmatizing mental illness as causing higher levels of violent crimes than the general public. In reality, evidence supports that people with mental illness are involved in violent crimes for the same reasons as those without mental illness; in the same proportions, but not caused by the mental illness itself. The case of jealous rage would be a good example.
Silver Linings Play Book, beyond the serious aspects around mental illness, supports the ever resilient premise the art of love prevails over all adversaries. This love is romantic love, family love and community love. Smultz? Yes, but did I mention, it's a musical comedy?
Silver Linings Playbook. (35mm) directed by David O. Russell. USA. The Weinstein Company. 2012 (At the time of this publishing this film's scheduled release USA release date is November 21, 2012.)
For information About Stigmatization in Mental Illness see:
Chambless, Dianne. Beware the Dodo Bird: The Dangers of Over generalization. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice Volume 9, Issue 1, Article first published online: 11 MAY 2006
For information about informed consent, capacity and health disparity see:
Williams, September. Pain Disparity: Assessment and Traditional Medicine in THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PAIN MEDICINE Textbook on Patient Management. 2012. Deer, T.R.; Leong, M.S.; Buvanendran, A.; Gordin, V.; Kim, P.S.; Panchal, S.J.; Ray, A.L. (Eds.) Springer SBN 978-1-4614-1559-6