How Mad Are You?
Take ten volunteers, half have psychiatric disorders, the other half don’t – but who is who? Over five days the group are put through a series of challenges – from performing stand-up comedy to mucking out cows.
The events are designed to explore the character traits of mental illness and ask whether the symptoms might be within all of us.Three leading experts in mental health attempt to spot which volunteers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. But will the individuals who have suffered from mental illness reveal themselves?
Ten volunteers have come together for an extraordinary test. Five are “normal” and the other five have been officially diagnosed as mentally ill. Horizon asks if you can tell who is who, and considers where the line between sanity and madness lies.
Watch the full documentary now (Please read FAQ No.10 before watching)
Part 1
Part 2
Very interesting documentary!!!
It clears a lot of stigma around mental disorders. Further, it reveals that labeling people can have social consequences! As one of the participants put it, “never judge a book by its cover.”
I rate this documentary an 8/10
“I wonder if everyone on the planet simultaneously lost their minds, if anyone would be able to distance themselves enough from the situation to realize we had all gone crazy.”
-Wiley Wiggins
still cant get this provider to work, followed pt 10 in faq. Should exclude videos from this source. otherwise love the site and thanks
Works perfect for me Ed Roche.
However in the future I’ll avoid embedding films from Megavideo. There are too many complaints and the people are not comfortable with it.
Didn’t work for me either….Took me to a reported ‘attack’ site, according to my Virus detecting program.. Then it asked me to download their video player.. No thanks!
I’m about to watch the second half right now, megavideo wouldn’t let me finish it last night. Very interesting documentary so far. Really sort of makes you rethink everything we know about abnormal psychology.
Anyway, Alex, don’t ever follow any of the links megavideo gives you. Just close them immediately. You should be able to watch it in this window if you hit the red play button, close the link, then hit the green play button. But I guess mega doesn’t work for everyone, so, yeah.
Hmmm. Well, it was an interesting watch as far as entertaining goes. I thought the overall experiment was flawed in the sense that the people all knew they were going to be analyzed mentally… so they might let that consciously or subconsciously influence their behavior. the big picture results were what i expected (wont be able to tell the difference between illness/’normal’), while the ‘mystery’ of who was part of the ‘illness’ group had some surprises.
wouldn’t recommend it, as it wasn’t worth the 2 hr wait to find out that people who had been diagnosed ‘ill’ years earlier (in some instances) and with conditions that sometimes experience periods of no-symptoms, would be misdiagnosed… i wouldn’t expect otherwise.
Say what you want, the older lady appeared unstable to me, the more so after she has denied it. Irrational and defensive, and also apparently half-aware of other people noticing these both traits.
Very mind-opening. It is nice to put other people’s judgment on the line, even if they were experienced psychiatrists. I personally believe that Vicki might want to consider seeking medical help/counseling. She may have been over looked earlier in her life, and may not be “normal” as they put it.
This is such a great idea for educating the general public on mental illness. As someone who as personally struggled with depression, I’m really happy to see something like this out there.
I thought there was supposed to be someone in the group with schizophrenia…?? great doc!
this is just more proof that shrinks and their relationship with pharm industry’s labeling of a so-called ‘disease’ and a so-called ‘treatment’ is a conspiracy
This is just more proof that shrinks and their relationship with pharm industry’s labeling of a so-called ‘disease’ and a so-called ‘treatment’ is a conspiracy!!
these hi paid shrinks are getting a lot of money to just say what pleases and supports the pharm industry’s pursuit to produce and sell fake treatments for fake diceases.
Very enjoyable. This should be required viewing for the unkind, judgmental folks of the world.
I knew from the beginning that Yasmine has suffered from depression..
I knew something was wrong with Stewart, and I had a gueas that Yasmin was diagnosed with having a depression disorder.
Don’t understand why these “proffesionals” didn’t notice it.
But anyway, I never believed in psycholgists/psychiatrists. Psychology isn’t a precise science at all, so it’s very difficult to rely on it. Even at the times when I was supposed to have therapy, I never thought of taking it, and I managed to go through my life on my own.
I just don’t think these people can teach me something that I didn’t know about how to lead my life. That’s true to all people except people with real mental illness who have to be on observation and must take pills.
And besides, what’s being “mad” anyway? I believe that all of us can be diagnozed in having some kind of disorders. It means we must take therapies and pills to get “healthy?” We are human, we are not perfect. Every one of us are individuals, and all these “disorders” are part of our own personlity, part of who we are.
Most psychiatrists are too full of themselves. People who enter this job in the first place, are people who say they “want to help others”. That’s nice and everything, but think of it in another way – what kind of person do you think you have to be if you think you can “help” everyone? You must be a very, VERY, arrogant person.
And all these psychologists think that are better than their patients. They just don’t show it, of course. But that’s what they do think, mostly. And I hate being looked from above.
I don’t agree that psychologists/psychiatrists mostly think they’re better than their patients etc. Many people in the psychiatric and psychological professions agree that diagnosis is not a sensible way of helping people deal with difficult life situations, and take a formulative approach, of listening to the individual and engaging with them in a two-way conversation. The difficulty is that access to medical help, insurance support (esp in America), recognition of ‘illness’ to help get support needed from work etc. all rely on a diagnosis – a label – , so people in the professions give them one. In addition, doctors and medical professionals are heavily marketed by drug companies and have come to believe that giving a diagnosis and drugs will help their patients quickly (despite all of the evidence around the side-effects, withdrawal symptoms and long-term impacts of these drugs), whereas typical NHS waiting lists for someone to just get someone to talk to are probably around 2 years, depending on where you are in the country.
It’s become a necessity to medicalise mental struggles in the indivdual, in order to get them any kind of support, and this has tied in nicely with the recognition from drug companies that they can patent and market certain drugs if they can create / link to a diagnosis of something which sounds medical.
When you add this to the third factor, the desire for people in the psychiatric profession to medically legitimise what they do in order to get it taken seriously and widen the likelihood of people who are suffering seeking help (“it’s okay, it’s a disease like any physical disease, come and get treated as you would if this was the flu”), no wonder we can’t spot mental ‘illness’ from no ‘illness’. The illness is a false construct, but not necessaily one that people in the counselling professions agree with. They are just working within the system.
My view – the only thing that separates a medically depressed person for example, from someone who’s just unhappy, is their ability to cope with their life with the feelings they’re having and the fact that they asked for, or were given, professional help.
Hate how MegaVideo always cuts you off at 72 minutes… What’s the use of that?
Anyway, I went through the entire thing thinking that just because 5 of them were labeled as being ‘normal’, it might just mean that they’d hadn’t been diagnosed yet ;)
Certainly had more than 5 possible suspects in mind.
Double posting…! Sorry.
Watched the entire thing now. I don’t believe Vicky when she says she doesn’t have any mental problems. I think she’s one of those who just haven’t been diagnosed yet, like I said earlier in my first comment.
Perhaps she’s the one with the schizophrenia…? I thought they mentioned somewhere that someone in the group was schizophrenic. Or maybe they just implied it to make it more exciting for the viewing public, I don’t know.
Interesting show, in any case!
@john… well said