Now more than ever is the time to share Can's story... Please help spread stories about mental healt
Pearl J. Park
Dear friends of "Can,"
As many of us grieve the tragic, mind-numbing news of the massacre in Newtown, CT, we are left to ponder what we as a nation, a state and a community can do to help prevent something of this scale from happening again. Words are not enough to express the anguish felt. No single law or set of actions will arbitrarily prevent such an atrocity from reoccurring. There is no panacea. But one thing I do know with certainty is that most mental illnesses are treatable. And secondly, that there aren't enough stories about mental health recovery in the press which can mitigate this pervasive deranged, full-of-rage stereotype of people with mental illness, reinforced by this constant stream of news about these shootings. The fact is that this erroneous, but widely held public perception of mental illness probably deters thousands, like Adam Lanza, from seeking the care they deserve. The treatment that would significantly reduce their likelihood of committing a violent act.
Today in film and television, stories like "Can" are probably outnumbered 1 to a 100,000, even though there are millions more people who are recovering from mental illness than gunning down children in elementary schools. Even fewer news stories or films about Asian Americans with mental illness, with the exception of the Virginia Tech murderer Seung-hui Cho, exist. Because stories about mental health recovery do not draw the same volume of readership as massacres do, stories like Can's never get a chance in the spotlight. The barrage of news about a person with mental illness is nearly exclusively focused on murderers—the very small percentage of people with mental illness who become violent, often as a direct result of not receiving the care they deserve. Reporters expediently tracked anyone who had any contact with Adam during his life and asked a myriad of questions. What was he like when he was growing up? Who did he befriend in kindergarten? Did he exhibit any signs of mental illness when he was getting his hair cut, the reporter asked Adam's former stylist. The lives of the suspected killers and their families are under microscopic scrutiny, leaving no detail too small to report in the news. Their names are forever etched into the memory of Americans: Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Jared Lougher, Seung-hui Cho, etc.
Can you think of a single law-abiding citizen with mental illness whose name is instantly recognizable to Americans? I can't. That's not to say there aren't outstanding individuals living with mental illness whose names deserve to be etched into America's memory banks as icons of hope and extraordinary achievement. The MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient Elyn Saks, the mental health law attorney/scholar, who has lived with schizophrenia since a young adult in college, specialized in mental health law because of her experiences as a psychiatric patient. There's Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry, Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychologist by training and a consumer with bipolar disorder by living. After having survived numerous suicide attempts, she is a leading authority on bipolar disorder and penned a number of books that chronicle her lived experiences battling this disease. Then there's effervescent Dr. Frederick Frese, the Ohio-based psychologist with schizophrenia who has spent a lifetime fighting the stigma of mental illness. Yet not enough Americans, outside of mental health circles, know their names and of their achievements. You can be sure no reporter is fighting to get an interview with Elyn Saks' hairdresser about what she said or what she wore. No one is tracking down Dr. Jamison's first grade teacher to ask hard, pressing questions. Certainly no major network is repeatedly telling their recovery stories, including every minutiae of detail, of their lives over and over again until maximum saturation.
No wonder mental illness equals violence in the minds of some people. In Dr. Frese's speech (http://youtu.be/SKoh-UEsWTs) at the 2009 U.S. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association conference, he refers to an Oscar-winning and widely-viewed 1991 film about a brilliant psychiatrist with mental illness who eats people, Hannibal Lecter. "That Silence of the Lambs did not help my image at all," he joked. The impact of media portrayals on culture is inevitable and there is no escaping the resulting stigma for many people who live with mental illness. Research indicates that empathetic contact with persons with mental illness helps to decrease stigma. Films, as an emotionally engaging medium, often can serve as that empathetic contact, putting the viewer in the protagonist's shoes. "Can" is one of those rare films which features a protagonist with mental illness and offers some insights into the inner reality of a person with mental illness.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Help reverse the tide of the mass media's myopic focus on the intersection of violence and mental illness. Share Can's story on DVD with your friends, family, and neighbors. This link http://amongourkin.org/purchase_HomeDVD.html to the sale of the home DVD is only available for a limited time. Every story counts. For a small independent film production company like us to fight the skewed perception of mental illness rendered by corporate media like Reuters and Fox News is like David taking on Goliath. Yet, we are still crazy enough (in an endearing, non-stigmatizing way) to believe that we can each make a difference by sharing a single story with a few friends and colleagues. Can we outdo the impact of what the major media networks portrayals of Adam Lanza is doing? Not likely, but as Margaret Mead always said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
I urge you to champion Can's story and other stories about mental health recovery.
1) Buy a home DVD of "Can" and share it with your friends and family. http://amongourkin.org/purchase_HomeDVD.html
2) If you are with a nonprofit organization, please buy a nonprofit DVD of "Can" with public performance rights and host a screening. http://www.amongourkin.org/purchase_ComDVD.html
3) If you are with an educational institution, please buy an educational DVD of "Can" with public performance rights and host a screening. http://www.amongourkin.org/purchase_EducDVD.html
4) Ask your local public library to purchase a copy of "Can" and host a screening. http://www.amongourkin.org/purchase_PubDVD.html
5) Make a tax-deductible donation to our educational outreach campaign so more people can see the film "Can." http://www.amongourkin.org/donate.html
6) Share your story of recovery in a blog or other form of social media.
7) Write letters to major news organizations and ask them to please publish stories about the recovery of persons from mental illness, preferably with the same diagnosis as the much publicized murderers.
8) Make it popular on social media to support the health in mental health. Please "like" the Can webpage: amongourkin.org, Can's fan page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Can/119741771392816 and the Facebook pages of numerous mental health organizations.
California-based organizations and individuals receive a 25% discount on all "Can" DVDs. If you host a public screening, please let us know and we'll post it on our website. If you're interested in having the producer (that would be me) and the subject of the documentary Can Truong show up for the screening, please reply to this email.
Lastly, I urge you to donate to mental health organizations that support consumers and recovery. Some of them are grossly underfunded for the enormity of their mission:
1) National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association houses one of the first national consumer networks for AAPIs: National Asian American Pacific Islander Empowerment Net (NAAPIEN), which the subject of my documentary film Can Truong helped to establish. Click the "Donate" button on the lower right side of the main webpage: http://naapimha.org/
2) Local county and state affiliates of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. For a complete listing, please click here: http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Your_Local_NAMI&Template=/CustomSource/AffiliateFinder.cfm
3) National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy Please click the "Donate" button on the lower left side of the webpage: http://narpa.org/
Please pass on this email to three friends and ask them to be aware and be generous. Just do it. It just may be the ripple that starts the wave.
Happy holidays for those of you who celebrate Christmas and the new year!
Best regards,
Pearl
Pearl Ji-hyon Park
201-589-0623
lightf...@gmail.com
Please buy a DVD of "Can" at http://www.amongourkin.org/purchase.html
Please visit the website of "Can" a documentary film: amongourkin.org.
Blog: can-documentary.blogspot.com
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