Sharing – ‘Bedlam’ Documentary Shows State of Mental Health Care in Los Angeles

The documentary will air on PBS in April. Obviously, it will be focused on Los Angeles, a place where this problem is especially acute, but one that we might see play out, at a smaller scale, anywhere. It’s an important topic that people still don’t quite get until it’s someone in their family, or that why are close to, and they have to watch what happens.

Told in both book and documentary format, psychiatrist and filmmaker Ken Rosenberg, M.D., originally started making a film about mental health in emergency rooms. It didn’t take long before he realized that didn’t tell the whole story. He wanted to put human faces on the mental health crisis, especially those living with serious mental illnesses in a place like Los Angeles who frequently have nowhere to go other than the streets or jail. The resulting project was “Bedlam.”

“The purpose of making the film and writing the book is to promote advocacy, promote people to say, ‘This is outrageous. How can we let this happen?’” Rosenberg told The Mighty. “We’ve made so many strides in cancer and so many strides in infectious disease. Unfortunately, we haven’t made those strides with serious mental illness.”

In the mean time, here’s the trailer, and there’s more information in the article below, or read the book.

BEDLAM trailer from Upper East Films on Vimeo.

https://themighty.com/2020/01/bedlam-documentary-mental-health-los-angeles/