Your thoughts on how violence and psychiatric ilness are portrayed in the movies?

[DrRanj]

Hi all.

I am a regular poster, but I have had a recent name change due to a near outing incident.

I am a medical student and I am doing a special project on cinema and psychiatry. I need to write an essay and was thinking of basing it on whether the violence often associated with psychiatric illness in films is an accurate representation of real life (and/or how women with mental health problems are portrayed - have posted in fwr too to get input from this angle)

If anyone has any films they could recommend and their comments it would be great food for thought to get me started. Obviously I won't pinch any of your ideas directly, as everything I write about will have to be backed up by references anyway!

And as an aside I think this a really interesting topic for discussion anyway, whether I was writing an essay or not...

Of course I know that the vast majority of people suffering mental illness are not violent in any way shape or form. I myself have suffered with depression and pnd but have never harmed/or thought of harming anyone (apart from myself).

Any thoughts?

I have scizoaffective/bipolar1 ul think on this normally I'm quite enraged by media portrayal of psychosis. Off the top of my head I like gais baltare portrayal of a sci fi version of psychosis ( battle star galactica) as he shows psychosis is not always negative. I also love Alpha a series which portrays many mental illness ( again with a sci fi spin) in a accurate way. I will think up some negative ones and try to think of some movies that are either positive or negative.