E Royal College of Psychiatrists, to protest against the film. In their joint press release they say that the film considers schizophrenia, its symptoms, and treatment options as a joke. The charities plus the college are usually not calling to get a ban but might be handing outleaflets at 300 cinemas and have demanded that the film be given an “18” certificate. The behaviour portrayed in the film, they argue, has practically nothing whatever to complete with schizophrenia. In addition they point out that people impacted by schizophrenia don’t switch from “gentle to mental,” because the billboard advertisements say, but are far more generally withdrawn. In truth, “split personality” is a entirely different situation, a dissociative disorder rather than a psychotic illness. Me, Myself Irene is not terribly funny, and it is 1 far more instance of how people with mental illness are stigmatised by the media. Charlie/Hank is portrayed as violent, dangerous, and unfit to hold a responsible job. The film perpetuates damaging myths about mental illness. Charlie’s illness is blamed on his individual weakness, and he is “cured” not by medication or therapy, but by his own will energy plus the really like of a superb woman. Would any one ever count on someone with diabetes, or any other chronic illness, to overcome their situation by willpowerRita Baron-Faust overall health journalist, New YorkBMJ VOLUME 321 23 SEPTEMBER 2000 bmj.comALEX BAILEY/FILMFOUR LTDreviewsDoctors within the Motion pictures: Boil the Water and Just Say AahPeter E DansMedi-Ed Press, three.08, pp 408 ISBN 0 936741 14 7 Rating:f you’re truthful, are you able to say you’ve under no circumstances wanted to become Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, or Michael Douglas (older readers can substitute Clark Gable or Errol Flynn) Or how about among the list of Grants, Hugh and Cary Simply because they’ve all wanted to become you, a minimum of transitorily; cinema icons to a man [women readers, your day will come], they’ve acted as medics in movies. It indicates the industrial mileage in medicine that the film market has long recognised plus the star energy that has fuelled well-liked myth generating about medical doctors more than the years. Peter Dans is definitely an internist at Johns Hopkins University with a longstanding passion for movies, specifically doctor films. He’s written a regular column about them to get a US health-related Cibinetide web journal, and his book begins the sizeable process of thinking of the whys and wherefores of this underexplored genre. Dans picks out themes for instance “Hollywood Goes to Medical School” and “The Kindly Saviour” and looks at selected films asIcase studies, prefacing every chapter with observations concerning the topic in query. He tends to make trenchant points in regards to the portrayal of female and black doctors–note their absence from the opening list–in chapters that inevitably raise as several queries as they answer. The book is laced with a worldliness that prevents it from drifting into self reference–in a single nicely turned sentence Dans observes that “A generation that hardly knew severe illness came to find out great well being as a appropriate in lieu of a fragile blessing.” Dans confines his considerations to storylines, explicitly renouncing any aspirations to film studies-style academia. Even though this policy will most likely suit most readers, it may leave others hankering for a little extra cinematographic PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20110692 commentary. The book performs inside its personal terms, however, mainly because Dans’s lively prose brings the films to life. Are any of them actually good Well, “good” is, of course, a problematic adjective; although it is accurate that a discerning audience with no unique interest might be unimp.