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BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Woods Hill Film Festival | BEST DOCUMENTARY - The People's Film Festival
Public Health + Medicine • Psychiatry • Mental Health, Psychology + Counselling • Social Work • Physical Dependency + Prescribed Drug Withdrawal • Suicidology • Human Rights • Crisis InterventionDate of Completion: 2020 | Run Time: 54 & 76 minutes | Language: English | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Directors: Lynn Cunningham & Wendy Ractliffe | Producers: Lynn Cunningham, Wendy Ractliffe & Muffie Meyer
One in five Americans takes one or more commonly prescribed psychiatric medications on a daily basis. While these drugs can sometimes provide effective relief, they are prescribed far too often, frequently without discussing with patients the possible alternatives and potential adverse outcomes, both physical and mental. MEDICATING NORMAL follows five people who are harmed by the very medications they believed would help them. It is the untold story of the serious consequences that can occur when market-driven medicine intersects with human beings in distress.
University College London | Joanna Moncrieff, Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry
“Medicating Normal is a powerful and moving film about the damage that is done by the inappropriate medicalisation of human predicaments and the reckless prescribing of psychiatric drugs. The film reveals the harm done to its subjects whose lives were derailed by prescribed medicines, and it shows the courage and determination it took to get off the drugs. Watch it and weep for all the others who have been harmed in this way-I did!”
The University of British Columbia | Thomas L. Perry, Clinical Assistant Professor
“Anyone who prescribes psychotropic drugs should watch Medicating Normal, not once but twice. Then think about whether your patients really ‘need’ drug therapy. What are the chances it will help more than harm? A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but this film should cause many to wonder whether patients know more about the drugs than most prescribers.”
Stanford University Medical Center | Anna Lembke, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
“Medicating Normal dares to challenge prevailing myths about how psychotropic medications work, or fail to, in our ongoing struggle to treat mental illness. It promises to spark a long-overdue national conversation on the growing problem of overprescribing.”
University College London | Mark Horowitz, Psychiatry Trainee & Clinical Research Fellow
“Most psychiatrists know that the studies on which our drugs are approved last just a few weeks. Therefore, we have all, in a quiet moment, asked ourselves, ‘What is the effect of putting people on these drugs for years or decades?’ Medicating Normal is a powerful film that answers this question in a disturbing and eye-opening way. This film should be mandatory viewing for prescribers, patients and their family members. It is a sober redress to the pro-Pharma messaging so prevalent in our society."
Texas Tech University School of Medicine | Rakesh Jain, Clinical Professor
"Even as a persnickety psychiatrist, I find this documentary to be hugely beneficial as a conversation starter on this important topic. Not everyone will come out of it agreeing with all it says, but I can guarantee it will provoke additional thinking in every clinician, and perhaps even create a shift in our thinking and action on the issue of medication prescribing in America."
Case Western Reserve University | Awais Aftab, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
"Medicating Normal is a remarkable documentary that illustrates how conversations about the harms of psychiatric medications have entered the public realm. In response to the failure of the medical system to adequately acknowledge these harms, ex-patients/survivors are taking ownership of their psychiatric distress and addressing it on their own terms. These are complex issues and there are no easy answers; the strength of Medicating Normal is that it boldly initiates a societal discussion that has been long overdue.”
AWARDS
Best of Fest and Best Documentary Feature | Woods Hole Film Festival
Audience Award and Best Documentary | The People’s Film Festival
FESTIVALS
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Sedona International Film Festival
DC Independent Film Festival
Through Women's Eyes International Film Festival
Greenwich International Film Festival
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
Woods Hole Film Festival
The People's Film Festival
Richmond International Film Festival
ChangeFest
REEL Recovery Film Festival
DocUtah International Film Festival
Trauma Research Foundation Winter Film Festival