Coursework Research

Movies and Mental Illness: using films to understand psychopathology- Danny Wedding, Ryan Niemieo


In all of human perpetual experience, nothing conveys information or evokes emotion quite as clearly as our visual sense.

Many consider movies to be the most influential form of mass communication (cape 2003)--- http://www.hdbp.org/psychiatria_danubina/pdf/dnb_vol21_no2/dnb_vol21_no2_230.pdf

Films are especially important influencing the public perception of mental illness because many people are relatively uniformed about the problems of people with mental disorders.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and other health professionals who work with these patients are often portrayed as "arrogant and ineffectual" "cold-hearted and authoritarian"

Stigma is one of the reasons that so few people with mental health problems actually receive help (corrigan, Roe+Tsang,2011)

High angle + low angle shots give emphasis to a characters control, power, strength, strength, weakness and a variety of other dynamics.