Capstone Project - Pt.2 (Television Show Episode)

Scott Pelley doing the intro

For this part of my Capstone, I chose an episode of 60 Minutes titled Nowhere to go: Mentally ill youth in crisis. It affects the behavior of it's viewers by conveying information and influencing their opinion. It does this by sharing personal stories of parents who have children with severe psychosis who can't find they help they truly need because the only place to go is the emergency room, which is extremely pricy, and the insurance company frequently stops paying in the middle of this crisis treatment, forcing parents to leave the only safe haven for their children in the midst of their critical breakdowns. An insurance company even suggested that a mother should give up her child to the state so that she may get the proper health care. 

60 Minutes Logo

This program affects the attitudes or beliefs the viewer may have by drawing upon those personal stories. In one part, Scott Pelley speaks to a group of mothers who have banded together because of their children having mental illness. When asked what the difference was between being the mother of a child with mental illness and a mother of a child with cancer, or some deadly disease, one--point blank--said: "Sympathy." It's quite heartbreaking, to think that a community would so readily ostracize a person who has no control over the hand they were dealt. No matter what you may believe about current mental health services, this makes you think about how individual people feel, and hopefully makes you look at the bigger picture of how families are affected. 

The knowledge to be gained from this program is quite dumbfounding. After the 1960s, many large, state hospitals for the mentally ill were shut down. This was because the common thought was that local communities would be a better setting for those with mental illness; a place to get better treatment. However, no adequate facilities were actually built, resulting in the number of beds for patients dropping from 500,000 to 100,000. "We have 52 psychiatric beds here at Yale", says Brian Geyser, a nurse practitioner at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut--which has one of best psychiatry wards in the nation. "And right now, all 52 are full[...]" This shows the inadequacy of care in the mental health field. The only option simply isn't working. This is quite a contrast to my non fiction book. In Sybil, which takes place from the mid 1950s to the late 1960s, mental health services was at its peak. Doctors were pioneering new ideas and treatment, facilities specializing in the care of the mentally ill still existed. This television show episode shows the decline of that.

Mental Illness can affect anyone...

The creators of this episode expect you to recognize what is going on in America with the current mental health service system--which is not good for anyone. It does this by showing us actual people, whether it is parents, doctors, or even the patients themselves, in Yale New Haven Hospital. Through interviews and the real life footage is how this carried out.

For the chosen activity, I have decided to post a poll on the right hand side of this blog, in hopes that after reading this post, people will agree that mental health services in America are incredibly bad, if not worse than they have been in the past, but that will be addressed in an upcoming post or posts. 

Annotation:

"Nowhere to go: Mentally ill youth in crisis." Zill de Granados, Oriana, and Michael Rey. 60 Minutes. CBS News. CBS, Eau Claire. 26 Jan. 2014. Television.

All parents want is to help their children, this is especially true for parents of children with mental illness. With less and less sources of help however, this is extremely difficult. Scott Pelley visits one of the top hospitals in the country to speak with the doctors and patients to get to the bottom of this terrible trend of helplessness. He also lays out the facts about the downward slope mental health services are taking. The episode of 60 minutes tends to favor the side that there is little hope for those with mental illness. This is typically standard with what I’ve read before considering where our mental health services are heading.This episode of 60 minutes fits well with my research because once again it’s a modern look at what we have become in terms of our mental health services.  

Capstone Project - Pt. 1 (Nonfiction Book)

The book in question

After numerous occurrences of "missing time", Sybil Isabel Dorsett (The real woman this narrative being based off of is named Shirley Ardell Mason), a graduate student at Columbia University seeks help. Though the incident itself was nothing new, it's how much time that has passed which worries Sybil. After not recovering in the care of her parents, she eventually goes to a Psychologist by the name of Cornelia Wilbur. Nothing appears out of the ordinary at first. Sybil Isabel Dorsett is nothing more than a closed off, depressed individual. This is, however, until Sybil changes into someone else after a moment of extreme stress. Dr. Wilbur notices this, and is surprised. Sybil, as it turns out, is a split personality. This, however, is only the surface. Sybil, ends up having 16 separate personalities, 14 women and 2 men.

Shirley Adrell Mason 

Throughout the rest of this extremely well crafted biography, we learn about Sybil's terrible past, one of physical, verbal, and even sexual abuse at the hands of an unstable mother diagnosed, but never treated for, Schizophrenia. Through this, the death of her grandmother, an already strict, religious upbringing, and her father's inability to take action and save his daughter, Sybil acquires her numerous personalities who take over various aspects of her life, such as Peggy Ann, who is the only one who knows how to multiply and subsequently does her chemistry homework, or Mike who fixes things. At many points during the narrative, each alternate personality makes an appearance, and at one point, two personalities take over Sybil's body at the same time, but you would think that two different people are in the room thanks to Flora Rheta Schreiber's amazing writing style.

Dr. Wilbur, in the meantime, is trying to find a way to help her patient. As a doctor who practices Psychodynamic Analysis, she tries to help Sybil through the standard "sit on this couch and let's talk about your dreams" deal, which was big in the 50s. But, it's easy to see that such a technique won't work and so she must turn to hypnosis as a means to integrate Sybil and her 16 personalities, but it wouldn't be easy. Overall, as well as being a heart retching story of abuse and mental illness, it's also extremely heartwarming to see the motherly relationship grow between Dr. Wilbur and Sybil. It's definitely worth the read.

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Flora Rheta  Schreiber

During Sybil, there are many references to medical practices that were relevant during the time that these events took place, including the use of Sodium Pentothal, or "Truth Serum":  "From long experience Dr. Wilbur knew that abreaction--the emotional release or discharge resulting from recalling to awareness a painful experience that has been repressed because it was consciously intolerable--with Pentothal was a remarkably useful tool." (355). Though attributed with being somewhat unreliable, Sybil (or Shirley) showed great improvement. "[...]Sybil came to know a sense of freedom never before had been hers. Pentothal, a barbiturate that is both an anesthetic and a hypnotic, had conferred the sensation of feeling perfectly well--an experience Sybil had never had before." (355). After her patient's growing dependence upon the Pentothal, Dr. Wilbur tried basic hypnosis, which another popular treatment used by Psychoanalysts at this time. "Her patient was a hysteric. Since the time of Charcot and Freud hysterics were known to be readily hypnotizable. Dr. Wilbur decided at least to investigate this technique. Before she had become a psychoanalyst, she had used hypnosis successfully with other patients." (384).

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The real Dr. Cornelia Wilbur

While reading, I found myself asking a few questions. The main one was: Why, if everyone in the town of Willow Corners knew that Sybil's mother was unstable, why did no one do something? Or, why did her extended family not intervene more than what they did? On top of these, I have to bring up the question of: If the use of Pentothal was a proper choice? Obviously knowing it's addictive properties, why would Dr. Wilbur still administer it instead of going to hypnosis right way? Another question was: How would Sybil be treated today with far more technologically advanced practices in place? Finally, I asked the question of: What would a psychologist under another discipline think of her case and what would they do to help her? Just having a psychoanalyst only gave one point of view on how to handle such a baffling case.

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All in all, this book was an amazing read. At first, I wasn't sure t would fit with what I wanted my topic to be, but I was dead wrong. It's absolutely perfect. Along with insight into how psychology was functioning at this time in history, it also offered a look into the world of one person with Multiple Identity Disorder--or Dissociative Identity Disorder today--and that one person's struggle to become whole again. It's definitely guided my ideas and now I have one period of time down for this project. 

Annotation:

Schreiber, Flora Rheta. Sybil. Chicago: Regnery, 1973. Print
After numerous occurrences of "missing time", Sybil Isabel Dorsett (The real woman this narrative being based off of is named Shirley Ardell Mason), a graduate student at Columbia University seeks help. Though the incident itself was nothing new, it's how much time that has passed which worries Sybil. After not recovering in the care of her parents, she eventually goes to a Psychologist by the name of Cornelia Wilbur. Nothing appears out of the ordinary at first. Sybil Isabel Dorsett is nothing more than a closed off, depressed individual. This is, however, until Sybil changes into someone else after a moment of extreme stress. Dr. Wilbur notices this, and is surprised. Sybil, as it turns out, is a split personality. This, however, is only the surface. Sybil, ends up having 16 separate personalities, 14 women and 2 men.The book is an excellent blend of storytelling and actual facts. It is a bit on the psychodynamic side  of treatment but still offered a good amount of info.This fits well with my research by showing one specific case of how a person was treated for mental illness during this time.