This May, Voices, an award-winning documentary about serious mental illness, will make its national debut on PBS for Mental Health Awareness Month.
The film seeks to put a human face on serious mental illness, which is too often consigned to the margins by fear and dread, said filmmaker Gary Tsai, a member of the Treatment Advocacy Center Psychiatric Advisory Board.
“As the son of a mother with schizophrenia, I’ve long felt that if everyone could view people living with mental illness the way that I viewed my mother, stigma would not possess the power that it does,” said Tsai. “But I also realized that like most people, she was also sometimes very angry and even frightening, particularly during the height of her paranoia and untreated psychosis.”
The documentary features “intimate portraits” of three very different individuals and their struggle with severe mental illness in America’s broken mental health system, according to the documentary’s website. The stories of Sharon, Thomas and Aaron highlight the challenges, realities and difficult choices that surround people with psychotic mental illness and those who love them.
“The film, at its core, is about people with serious mental illness, courageously told by people with the illnesses and their families themselves,” Tsai said.
Watch the trailer here.
Find out when Voices will air on your local PBS station.
The film seeks to put a human face on serious mental illness, which is too often consigned to the margins by fear and dread, said filmmaker Gary Tsai, a member of the Treatment Advocacy Center Psychiatric Advisory Board.
“As the son of a mother with schizophrenia, I’ve long felt that if everyone could view people living with mental illness the way that I viewed my mother, stigma would not possess the power that it does,” said Tsai. “But I also realized that like most people, she was also sometimes very angry and even frightening, particularly during the height of her paranoia and untreated psychosis.”
The documentary features “intimate portraits” of three very different individuals and their struggle with severe mental illness in America’s broken mental health system, according to the documentary’s website. The stories of Sharon, Thomas and Aaron highlight the challenges, realities and difficult choices that surround people with psychotic mental illness and those who love them.
“The film, at its core, is about people with serious mental illness, courageously told by people with the illnesses and their families themselves,” Tsai said.
Watch the trailer here.
Find out when Voices will air on your local PBS station.