New Movie Watch Download: Dissociative Identity Disorder

Heath Ledger’s Joker 'exacerbates stereotypes about mental health'

Hollywood shows schizophrenics and those with other mental illnesses only as either stupid or evil, according to a new report for the Time to Change Campaign, which is backed by the Mind and Rethink charities.
The latest Batman film, for which Ledger won a posthumous Oscar, is criticised for pandering to a false stereotype of schizophrenics, that they have split personalities.
. . . .

A survey of 1989 people, commissioned for the report, found that 49 per cent had seen people with a mental illness acting violently on screen.
In total, 44 per cent of those asked believe that people with mental illnesses are more prone to violence.
Sue Baker, Director for Time to Change, said: “This report highlights that movies are the main source of information that reinforces negative stereotypes of mental illness above and beyond any other form of media.
“We need to make it clear to directors and producers that they can still break box office records without wrecking lives.”

A Fine State This Is (2003)

Jessica Chandler’s astonishing documentary looks at lesbian artist Fargo Deborah Whitman, who has multiple personality disorder (which is now referred to by the more clinical and, frankly, more opaque term disassociative identity disorder or DID). The film screens as part of an especially strong slate at Rendezvous With Madness, a 10-day festival focussing on mental illness, addiction and other odd workings of the mind. By the end of A Fine State This Is, one wonders whether there is anything disordered about Whitman. Her living as a legion of selves, whom she calls “alters” — among them are a gay man, several children and a couple of apes — seems to make a hell of a lot more sense than the ordered repression that we call normal.