Crazywise - A Review of the Film by Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson

A remarkable and unique film is reaching a growing audience through the medium of community screenings on both sides of the Atlantic. Crazywise, the work of directors Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson, is an invitation to explore the different perspectives regarding deep emotional or mental distress in western and other less developed cultures. It boils down in essence to one question – should the experiencing of a psychotic episode be termed a break down, or a break through? Breaking through the distress to become the person you were always meant to be.

The film consists of interviews with various mental health experts and also focusses on the stories of two Americans who have had to negotiate a path through the mental health system in the United States. What is clear is how different both Adam and Ekhaya's journey might have been had they experienced their difficulties in the developing world. One of the remarkable statistics disclosed by psychologist and mental health researcher Prof John Read, is the difference in recovery rates between developed western civilisation and developing nations. Despite the eye-watering budgets expended on pharmaceutical drugs and psychiatry in the west, the recovery rate for 'schizophrenia' is about one third. In the developing world it is about two thirds. This should surely be telling us that something is not quite right. What exactly is it that stops us from acknowledging that this is a big problem, and that we surely have a lot to learn from societies that we often consider to be less sophisticated or civilised than our own?

This fact is explored throughout the film, with examples from various cultures and tribal communities around the world. It seems to be a recurring theme that initiation into shamanism or the role of healer often starts with an emotional disturbance or trauma, such as hearing voices or what we in the west would see as 'madness'. Furthermore, it seems that in our culture, we simply don't have the skills to deal with and effectively help someone having experiences of this nature. Clearly we are in denial about the levels of our expertise when it comes to mental or emotional health. Many psychiatric survivors are paying for this wilful blindness, living lives full of pain and suffering, and often experiencing the crippling and dangerous side effects of psychiatric medication.

One of the main pillars supporting this unsatisfactory state of affairs is the existence of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) now in it's 5^th edition. With each edition, the number of 'disorders' grows, and now many quite normal (though distressing) human experiences, such as grief, have been pathologised and are medicated with powerful pharmaceutical drugs. Counsellor, facilitator and psychiatric survivor, Will Hall describes the DSM as “a sophisticated way of not listening to people”, probably one of the most memorable sentences from the film, although there are so many such phrases. The DSM is also responsible for enabling poor levels of service to continue, as it can be demonstrated that medical practitioners are merely following protocol, and are therefore not to blame if treatments prove to be ineffective.

Phil Borges - Director Crazywise

Not listening would appear to be one of the major stumbling blocks when it comes to western expertise in mental health. The interviews by director, Phil Borges with both Adam and Ekhaya, (despite Phil's confessed lack of expertise in mental health matters) demonstrate that being available to listen, from a place of compassionate curiosity, seems to be the catalyst for the depth of connection between Phil and his two interviewees. It enables both Adam and Ekhaya to be perfectly at ease and honest with him, to be their true selves as they have no fear of him or what he might do. There is no agenda other than to be present and to tell their authentic stories as they would wish it to be told. There is much to be learned from this aspect of the film alone.

Dr Gabor Maté

Another element that strikes with some force is the sense of 'us and them' that can manifest in mental health settings. This 'othering' is described in the film by addiction and childhood trauma specialist, Dr Gabor Maté, who suggests that this is a denial of the reality. Instead, he advises that we think about a continuum, a line on which we can all be plotted at various points depending on life experience and circumstance. He further suggests that we are all, without exception, susceptible to breakdown at the extreme end of the line if conditions go beyond what we can endure. If we could lose the 'them and us' way of looking at mental health, the sense of isolation, of being misunderstood experienced by so many psychiatric survivors could be considerably lessened. It seems incarceration and isolation are probably the worst possible environments in which to bring about a recovery from an episode of psychosis. The message is that connection appears to be what less developed cultures do supply, and what western medical expertise deprives its patients of. The growing movement for peer support is at last beginning to address that deficit.

I feel this remarkable film will make uncomfortable viewing for many entrenched in the western biomedical model, but in view of the alarming increase in levels of distress being experienced, and the fact that the rapidly growing number of prescriptions for psychiatric medications is doing nothing to alleviate the problem (or is even making matters worse), then their discomfort is a small and appropriate price to pay in order to change direction. I believe Crazywise gives us the opportunity to start to reframe how we look at many aspects of mental health, and how we start to effectively support those who are living with intolerable distress, creating a framework to ensure that post traumatic growth is a viable option for those who are searching for meaning in their distress. In the words of the 13^th century Persian poet, Rumi, “The Wound is the place where the light enters you.” Crazywise would seem to indicate that there is more than a little truth to this little pearl of ancient wisdom.

https://crazywisefilm.com/