Film Series: Alternative Perspectives
together to hear about ideas and approaches they may not have heard or had the time to fully explore. The intent of the series is not to necessarily convince any one person to change their perspective, but rather to create a forum for all of us to talk about and explore different ideas on mental health, psychiatric treatments and diagnosis, human rights and oppression and what it all means to us.
The Alternative Perspectives Film Series: Season III
The Alternative Perspectives Film Series - designed to bring people in a variety of roles within the community together to look at ways beyond our standard paradigm to understand distress and how to support people through it - will return this fall. Each screening is followed by community dialogue led by someone directly involved with the film’s making. The first two films will be:
SEPTEMBER: ‘Crazy’ by Lise Zumwalt, a documentary about forced psychiatric ‘treatment’. www.alternet.org/culture/crazy-courageous-documentary-about-forced-psychiatric-treatment
NOVEMBER: ‘Crazywise’ by Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson, a documentary about spiritual and transformative interpretations of ‘crisis’. www.crazywisefilm.com
Coming Off Psych Drugs - August, 2013
About the film:
In June of 2012, twenty-three people came together to discuss the subject of coming off psychiatric drugs. We were psychiatric survivors, therapists, mental health consumers, family members, and activists, united by a passion for truth-telling. More than half of us had successfully come off psych drugs, including cocktails of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. What resulted from our three-day gathering was an unforgettable meeting of the minds.
This 75-minute documentary (directed by Daniel Mackler) offers a rare glimpse into the world of coming off psych drugs through the eyes of those who have done it. The film presents, among others, Will Hall, author of the world-renowned “Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs,” Oryx Cohen, director at the National Empowerment Center, Laura Delano, blogger at www.madinamerica.com, and Daniel Hazen, noted psychiatric survivor and human rights activist.
Although this documentary is not medical advice, it intends to offer something even better: hope. In a world where increasing numbers of people are put on psychiatric drugs every day, where more than 20 percent of Americans already take them, and where so many are told they need to stay on them for life, COMING OFF PSYCH DRUGS offers proof that another way is possible.
There will be five screenings across the state, with filmmaker, Daniel Mackler present at each one to lead a group discussion at the conclusion of each showing.
Screenings are as follows:
Tuesday, August 20th, 6:30pm to 8:30pm @ the Capitol Theatre, 204 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington
Wednesday, August 21st, 4pm to 6pm @ the RLC's Pittsfield Center, 152 North Street, Suite 230, Pittsfield
Thursday, August 22nd, 4pm to 6pm @ Springfield Technical Community College's Scibelli Hall Theater, Springfield
Friday, August 23rd, 12pm to 2pm @ the Central Mass RLC's Worcester Center, 91 Stafford Street, Worcester
Friday, August 23rd, 5:30pm to 7:30pm @ the RPX, One Osgood Street, Greenfield (right behind the Recover Project and RLC's Greenfield Center)
For a flyer to share, click here!
All screenings are free and open to the public, the space is limited at some of the venues and priority will go to those who sign up by calling 413.539.5941 x 301 or e-mailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
We have applied for Continuing Education Credits for Licensed Social Workers and Licensed Mental Health Clinicians.
About filmmaker, Daniel Mackler: Daniel is a former therapist and Licensed Social Worker from New York City who now spends much of his time travelling the world and learning about people and approaches in other areas. He is also an author, a musician and a filmmaker whose previous works include ‘Take These Broken Wings,’ ‘Healing Homes,’ and ‘Open Dialogue.’ Learn more about Daniel and his other films at www.wildtruth.net.
Past Film Events: Open Dialogue - July, 2011
In the far north of Finland, a stone’s throw from the Arctic Circle, a group of innovative family therapists have converted the area’s traditional mental health system, which once boasted some of Europe’s poorest outcomes for schizophrenia diagnoses, into one that now gets the best statistical results in the world for first-break psychosis. They call their approach Open Dialogue.
Their principles, though radical in some ways in this day and age, are surprisingly simple. They meet people in crisis immediately and often daily until the crises are resolved. They avoid hospitalization and its consequential stigma, preferring to meet in the homes of those seeking their services. And, perhaps most controversially, they avoid the use of anti-psychotic medication wherever possible.
They also work in groups, because they view psychosis as a problem involving relationships. They include in the treatment process the families and social networks of those seeking their help, and their clinicians work in teams, not as isolated, sole practitioners. Additionally, their whole approach values the voice of everyone in the process, most especially the person directly in crisis. And finally, they provide their services, which operate within the context of Finnish socialized medicine, for free.
Open Dialogue, a 74-minute documentary in English featuring Jaako Seikkula, Birgitta Alakare, Robert Whitaker, Mia Kurtti, Paivi Vahtola, and Timo Haaranaiemi, weaves together interviews with psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and journalists to create both a powerful vision of medication-free recovery and a hard-hitting critique of traditional psychiatry.
Past Film Events: Between the Lines - May, 2011
'Between the Lines' is an award-winning 21-minute, visually lyrical, experimental documentary created by and about women who cut themselves. It explores the gray areas in women's relationships to their bodies in the context of deliberately self-inflicted injury and seeks to negotiate the fine line between self-destructive behavior and self-preserving coping mechanisms.
Past Film Events: Healing Homes - March, 2011
Be one of the first in the world to see this groundbreaking film!
About the Film:HEALING HOMES, a documentary film on recovery from psychosis (directed by 
Daniel Mackler of “Take These Broken Wings”), chronicles the work of the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden. The organization, backed by over twenty years of experience, places people who have been failed by traditional psychiatry with host families -- predominately farm families in the Swedish countryside -- as a start for a whole new life journey.
Host families are chosen not for any psychiatric expertise, but rather, for their compassion, stability, and desire to give back. People live with these families for upwards of a year or two and become an integral part of a functioning family system. Workers from the Family Care Foundation also offer individuals intensive psychotherapy and provide host families with intensive supervision.
The Family Care Foundation eschews the use of diagnosis, works within a framework of striving to help people come safely off psychiatric medication, and provides their services, which operate within the context of Swedish socialized medicine, for free.
HEALING HOMES weaves together interviews with farm families, individuals living with them and workers from the Foundation to create both a powerful vision of medication-free recovery and an eye-opening critique of the medical model of psychiatry.
Past Film Events: Crooked Beauty - October, 2010
The Western Mass RLC will begin their fall film series titled ‘Alternative Perspectives on Mental Health’ at the end of this month. The purpose of the series is to gather individuals across agencies, schools and the community to view films that offer new ideas or alternative perspectives about mental health experiences as a way of encouraging discussion and considering the potential impact and needs in our area. The series will kick off with special screenings of ‘Crooked Beauty,’ by Ken Paul Rosenthal. Ken will be traveling in from California to join us and lead discussion after each showing. Crooked Beauty screenings are being co-sponsored by the Western Mass RLC, the Center for Human Development, the Brien Center, NAMI Berkshire County, Mount Holyoke College, Clinical & Support Options, Advocates, Inc, the Transformation Center and the Metro Boston RLC.
