There are few positive aspects of having only five channels. (Obviously, basic cable is a bit different in the UK.) One of them, though, is having easy access to quality news and documentaries. The Doctor Who Hears Voices, a film by director Leo Regan, challenges the social stigma of having a mental illness and raises ethical questions about the use of medicine and being honest with employers about suffering from mental problems. It aired last night on Channel 4.
Rufus May, the psychologist who treats Ruth, believes that medicine can be detrimental to a patient’s health. (“When you give someone medicine, it makes them dumb and shuts them up. You’re not making them better, you’re making them stupid,” he said.)
To protect Ruth’s identity, the director used an actress to re-enact conversations between Rufus and Ruth. The actress had nothing to go on but notes about Ruth’s condition. The director says however that his interviews with Rufus are pure documentary.
Ruth is a new doctor who reveals to her employers that she has thought about suicide. She is deemed unfit to practice and is temporarily released from her position at a hospital. Ruth’s employers – who only believe that she is depressed, and are not aware of the voices – require her to take medication. She is determined to return to work and rather than take medication, she asks Rufus for help. She must undergo a series of evaluations, during which Ruth must act like she is getting better while her voice tells her that she is a fraud and a liar.
While she is working at a nursing home, Ruth is convinced that the bubbles in the fish tank are controlling someones heart. She says that the voice tells her constantly that she is a “worthless piece of shit,” that she will never get a job and will end up alone, in addition to encouraging her to kill herself in different ways. While at first Rufus thinks that she is only a danger to herself, Ruth’s voice begins telling her to kill her parents and refrain from seeing Rufus. Ruth is paranoid and believes that the government is following her, and that Rufus is trying to kidnap her when he invites her to his home. She waits on his front porch for over two hours before ringing the doorbell for fear that her voice is correct.
There is one scene where Ruth, who is bipolar, has a particularly difficult time and is having a manic fit. She darts in and out of the road in front of a garbage truck. Instead of succumbing to the voice or telling her to pop a pill, Rufus encourages her to physically fight with him to express her anger at the voice in her head.
When the filmmaker implies that none of these delusions are real, Ruth is made to feel crazy and gets angry. For schizophrenics, these delusions are as real as anything they have ever lived, and diminishing these feelings by chalking it up to a mental illness is insulting. (It is much like telling a depressed person to shake off sadness and be happy, or telling a person with a panic disorder to calm down.) Much like a psychologist would analyze dreams or earlier life situations, Rufus sees the symbolism in Ruth’s delusions, even relating the beating heart and the fish tank to the death of her brother, who died of a heart attack. By the end of the film, he and Ruth identify the voice as a bully that put Ruth down in high school.
Rufus at times attempts to talk to the voice through Ruth and tells it to stop misleading Ruth. He assures Ruth that he cares about her and tells her to stop pushing people away – a lifelong problem she has had that may have been the beginning of her feeling trapped and alone.
Throughout the film, Rufus’s radical approaches to treating schizophrenia are continually challenged by psychologists who insist on using medication almost 100% of the time. Rufus admits that his own experiences overcoming schizophrenia might make him less understanding about its perceived necessity. One actually says that if a patient of his refused to take medication, he would have them institutionalized, restrained by nurses and forcibly injected. This type of attitude can lead patients to feel humiliated and degraded, as well as helpless and even more out of control than they might without being forced to take medication.
Rufus implies that the trauma of a psychiatric ward makes it harder or even impossible to overcome schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. “You’re mentally ill, they’re not…these people will never invite you home for dinner,” he says. “These people think you are genetically different to them, a degenerate.” By making patients feel inferior and treating them as if they are animals who are not smart or capable enough to get well, institution workers could actually be prohibiting them from getting better.
Rufus admits that he had to lie about his medical history because he had mental problems in order to train as a psychologist. Mental illness is so highly stigmatized that if you are diagnosed and you have to apply for jobs, most psychologists will tell you to refrain from telling your potential employers about your problem.
The end of the film shows Ruth back to work, happy and on the road to recovery. She says that she still hears the voice, but the problem is not the voice. In fact, she said, she has gotten used to it. “Him being here isn’t a boundary,” she tells the director. “He’s not the problem. It’s if people found out. That would be the problem.”
The documentary really analyzes the question of whether or not people with mental illnesses can live normal lives. While schizophrenia is not as common as such mental problems as depression or bipolar disorder, most every day people are no strangers to mental illness. In fact, it is estimated that one in four people deal with a mental illness at some point in their lives. So before you dismiss people with mental illnesses as crazy, remember that there are likely many people in your life – perhaps even yourself – who struggle to overcome mental problems every day.
