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.