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Emily Smail
What is my film trying to say?
My film follows the life of a schizophenic girl who, as a result of not taking her medication, starts falling into a state of paranoia.
I want my film to challenge societies view of schizophenic people. It would seem that the only view everyday people get of schizophenia, is what they are told by the media. The media only ever portray schizophenic people as mad killers, hence that is what society see them as. How many headlined stories are there of schizophenic people hurting themselves? Or the suicical rates of schizophrenic people?
Despite some publicized incidents in recent years, people with schizophrenia rarely commit random homicide, research shows.
Data was collected from seven studies in four countries and researches found that the odds of a schizophernic person killing a stranger was 1 in 14 million per year.
The risk appears even lower if the disorder is being treated with antipsychotic medication.
They conclude that it is "exceptionally rare" for someone with schizophrenia to kill a stranger - and that earlier and continued treatment of the disorder could make these events rarer still.
People with schizophenia have a 50 times higher risk of attempting suicide than the general population and this risk is very serious.
Suicide is the number one cause of premature death among people with this mental illness.
-An estimated 10%-13% kill themselves and 40% attempting suicide atleast once (and as much as 60% of males attempting suicide)
I think that the media has created a cruel image of people suffering from this horrid illness; when in fact, they do not seem to be the monsters that the media display them as. It seems that schizophenic suffers tend to hurt themselves more than they do others. 15% of schizophenic people have died in the last 30 years and the chances of a schizophrenic killing a stranger was said to be 1 in 14 million per year.
Therefore, I want my film to be about a real schizophrenic girl. Not a monster that will make headlines due to her brutality.
Futhermore, I'd like my film to make people think about the financial cuts to mental health facilities inflicted by the goverment.
I thought this would be have an impact on the audience as I hope it would baffle them as to why the goverment is hardly funding mental health facilities, even when the outcomes of mental illness can be fatal.
I chose to end my film on this slide as I hoped to evoke suspicion in my audience. It does infact, seem crazy that the goverment have made such drastic cuts to mental health services. Hopefully these final words will beg the question of why?
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