Thru My Eyes-- The mental health system is a definition of insanity

This video is informative....an hour long but it's a discussion on how/why mental health system fails those with a mental illness.  Something I can attest to personally.

Minds on the Edge

MINDS ON THE EDGE: Facing Mental Illness is a multi-platform media project that explores severe mental illness in America.

The centerpiece of the project is a television program airing on PBS stations in October 2009. This video component is part of a national initiative that includes extensive web content with tools for civic engagement, active social media on Facebook and Twitter, and an ambitious strategy to engage citizens, professionals in many fields, and policy makers at all levels of government. The goal is to advance consensus about how to improve the kinds of support and treatment available for people with mental illness.

The television program MINDS ON THE EDGE: Facing Mental Illness effectively illuminates challenging ethical issues as well as systemic flaws in program and policy design, service coordination, and resource allocation. These problems are contributing to a mental health system that is widely acknowledged to be broken. MINDS ON THE EDGE also provides a glimpse of innovative solutions that are currently being implemented across the country. These innovations, many shaped by the guidance and expertise of people with mental illness, offer promising solutions and hopeful direction to transform the mental health system.

The last decade has seen great advances in understanding mental illness, and scientists are making exciting new discoveries every year. Approaching mental illness as a medical illness – like cancer or heart disease – scientists are working to develop new and better treatments, methods for early diagnosis, strategies for prevention, and the possibility of a cure. NARSAD, a charity dedicated to supporting scientific research in mental health, partnered with MINDS ON THE EDGE to provide web content about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and research that is advancing the frontiers of knowledge about these brain disorders.

Strides have also been made in many areas of the criminal justice system to intercept people with mental illness and redirect them into treatment programs instead of incarceration. The Council of State Governments Justice Center, one of the organizations that has been at the forefront of this effort, allowed MINDS ON THE EDGE to draw on their data and resources for content presented here about the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system.

The MINDS ON THE EDGE project is designed as a media catalyst to contribute to the conversation already underway in America and help to move it forward. The program, which is being widely distributed in DVD format, will be screened and discussed by civic groups, professional organizations, and leaders in government as a tool to engage the issues posed by severe mental illness and work together to find effective answers to this hidden crisis in America. NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, along with leading professional organizations like the American Psychiatric Association and U.S. Psychiatric Congress, have been active partners in this grassroots effort. The results of the civic engagement campaign are reported on in IMPACT.