A Dangerous Son: Tragic Circumstances and Tough Conversations

This past weekend, I watched A Dangerous Son, Liz Garbus’ documentary about the overwhelming obstacles that U.S. parents—especially mothers—face in getting help for their mentally ill children.   The film follows three mothers who in the course of the filming each face a barrage of insults, death threats, and violent behavior from their critically mentally ill adolescent sons.  In the face of this, each of these mothers advocate fiercely for their sons to gain access to mental and behavioral health services while simultaneously trying to keep themselves and other family members safe at home.  Viewers are granted intimate—and at times deeply painful—access to the devastating realities of day-to-day life with severe mental illness and the toll it takes on the entire family unit.  The specters of gun violence and recent mass shootings loom in the background the film.  Garbus makes explicit reference to the 2012 Newtown, CT and Aurora, CO massacres, and the viewer is primed to realize that the threats of violence toward self or others that each of the profiled boys makes during the course of the filming could be empty threats or the next national tragedy.  This troubling uncertainty is one of many—the uncertainty of gaining access to quality treatment, the uncertainty that treatment will prove effective with these boys, the uncertainty surrounding whether these boys will reach adulthood and what that adulthood...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tags: Health Care Adolescent Health Author: Bunch Bioethics and Public Policy mental health syndicated Source Type: blogs