More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 March
What do you expect of people ‘in public life’ ?*
Sainthood, sanctity, and never dare feel anything ?
Manipulated not a little by reporting (and, more importantly, reporting-style), do we project – stupidly, one might suggest – chucking a golf-club into some water with the subject-matter of Falling Down (1993) or, God forbid, Bowling for Columbine (2002) – do we allow ourselves to feel threatened [disappointed ?] by something only seen on a laptop / t.v. screen ?
Is it not similar to when press people, assuredly in the insular comfort of their 'private' offices, rage Who’s lost the fucking thumbnails THIS TIME ?!@*!, in an act of bullying oppression / intimidation of their subordinates (or peers), but write, approve or publish hypocritical cant, about some other person’s foul-mouthed rant !
Gun + guy dressed smartly = Golfer + chucking a club ?
Not even in a non-Euclidean multiverse !
All in all, the moral's clear for our mental well-being :
A campaign such as Time to Change (@TimetoChange) is up against some very articulate voices that tell us what people "acceptably" can - and cannot do - in public...
End-notes
* And, more relevantly, why ?
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
1 March (updated with Tweets, 2017)
Well, no...
Despite the mental-health charities waving flags, I do not think that it has changed very much - or in the right way - for most people, and this is why :
1. How many people will ever be a company director, and is just removing bars relating to mental health, without regard to safeguarding shareholders and those with whom the company may do business or interact, the right approach ? Limitations on being fit to act as a director that do not stereotype mental ill-health, but reflect the fact that it and many other criteria might make staying a director inappropriate, should have been considered.
2. Some can now serve on a jury, itself not an everyday calling (many enough are never asked), but - across the board - not someone on a Community Treatment Order. That is still wildly discriminatory.
3. Of the groundbreaking areas, being an MP is the thing anyone is least likely to do. Rather than just doing away with the previous law, the law should have been revised, so that an MP is as capable of carrying out parliamentary and constituency duties over time as a company director.
Three roles that affect almost no one in ordinary life, and this is a triumph ? No, it is just repealing legislation, rather than considering what should have been passed in its place ! It paves the way for no new and better legislation to deal with the real issue of discrimination in mental health in the slightest.
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 January
I hope that I may be excused for using this Tweet to illustrate a point or two*...
First, for good or ill (and from such things as having mental health services and a Mental Health Act), the words ‘health’ and ‘mental’ are linked, but it is typical that, when we mean mental ill-health we might write mental health, and vice versa.
It might be personal to me, but I hate – I almost cringe – this idea that mental distress should be linked with suffering. Not that people do not sometimes have a very painful, tortured time with voices or with depression, but just that one of the things that people believe, because they are inclined to say (or think) Bloody pull yourself together !, and why make it easier for them to say that those who have mental-health issues are suffering self-indulgent martyrs ?
Interlude : I was at the One in Four conference four years ago, where the topic was that of this posting, and I just wonder how far we have come on, because it is my belief that even the mental-health world is not united in its use of language. You may not have spotted, but I have already used Mind’s preferred term, of mental distress, and one that those who have had contact with services sometimes use, of mental-health issues - Mind’s misses out the emphasis, still so prevalent, on health, whereas the other phrase focuses on the issues. Then again, the preferred words in One in Four magazine are mental health difficulty…
So, there is no common language, which does not make communication any more straightforward, and the word depressed can mean, at one end, someone willing to undergo ECT not to be so numb and to feel something, and, at the other, someone a bit weepy because cooking dinner did not turn out right.
Back at our Tweet, the final thing that I wanted to say is that, when we wish that a friend with measles gets better soon, we do not look for – though it might be needed – some moral improvement.
However, I am not so sure that this sense is not imported into the language of mental health, because, on the sly, there is a belief that there is some sort of malignancy or turpitude in having a stay in a psychiatric unit, even if it is at the level of It’s all right for some ! from disgruntled colleagues or the like. (Talking, instead, about recovery does not make things any more palatable, for me, but creates more difficulties.)
We are urged to talk about mental health, by campaigns such as Time to Change, but do we have the words in which to do it that are not already laden with cynicism, connotation and criticism… ?
End-notes
* Not to pick at the writer of this Tweet, but at what the instinctive choice of language tells us all about this subject
