Movies & Mental Illness

 Movies and Mental Illness

 This course uses films as a way to introduce psychopathology. While films have great potential to educate about mental illness, they also have the ability to generate negative and inaccurate portrayals of psychopathology that eventuate in societal stigmatization of people with mental illness. Students act as movie critics, writing reviews of films that have been chosen from a list chosen by the instructor. In addition, students complete a group project involving the critique of a film chosen by the group. The reviews deal with what the films do well in portraying mental illness and what they do to promote inaccurate portrayals of the illnesses discussed in the film.