Awareness Film Night opens its 17th season on Oct. 12 with the film The Marketing Of Madness: Are We All Insane?
In 2007 half a million children and teenagers took at least one prescription for an anti-psychotic drug.
These powerful chemicals, designed originally for only the most seriously mentally troubled, are now a billion dollar industry.
This 2010 film documents the impact of this psychiatric-pharmaceutical partnership which has created an $80-billion profit from peddling psychotropic drugs to an unsuspecting public.
The film explores the validity of psychiatrists’ diagnoses, the safety of their drugs and disease mongering (selling sickness to the worried well). It exposes the truth behind slick marketing schemes, the ghostwriting of published studies, outright scientific deceit and asks the question: how did psychotropic drugs with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and excessive list of side effects, become the go-to treatment for every kind of psychological distress and how did psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental health treatment?
Awareness Film Night has been showing monthly films on topics normally disregarded by the mainstream media since 1994, beginning with the film Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky’s iconic documentary that details the methods used by the media to manipulate public opinion. Topics over the years have ranged from organic farming in Cuba to Palestinian Hip Hop bands; farmed salmon to the war in Afghanistan as told by an Afghani woman M.P.
A lending library of many of the previously screened Awareness Film Night documentaries is available to the public, generously located at the Video To Go in Sooke. The upcoming film season will feature documentaries on smart meters, modern education’s invasion of traditional cultures world-wide, a wild trip up the West Coast and creating a farm, among many more.
The films are held on the second Wednesday of the month from October through May at the Edward Milne Community School theatre.
Showtime is at 7 p.m. Admission is by donation.