Girl, Interrupted is pretty good, with a decent cast.
The Effect of Gamma Rays On Man In The Moon Marigolds
for Borderline Personality Disorder. No dramatic mental ward or couch scenes, but then most mental illness IRL goes untreated, too. Other posters have offered excellent films, but I’d bet this one most likely to make audience members get up and leave in tears.
The TVTtropes page Hollywood Psych, and pages thereon linked, should at least give you some hints on what movies to avoid for your purposes and why.
The Fisher King
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
I know they aren’t recent, but still good.
Mr. Jones is a pretty accurate portrayal of bipolar disorder.
Numb is a movie about depersonalization disorder, and having lived with it myself I think it’s accurate. Not everyone is the same so portrayal of any illness will vary.
BTW if you have Netflix Numb is available for instant viewing. It’s not the greatest romantic comedy in the world but it was worth watching.
Would the recent Dr Who episode with Vincent van Gogh be useful? It manages to be both light and serious at the same time.
The play was better than the movie, IMO, but Proof is pretty good. Though I’m not sure precisely what the mental illness there would be called… Probably something under the umbrella of schizophrenia.
Sean Penn’s The Indian Runneris as good a depiction of antisocial personality disorder as I’ve seen. Frank (Viaggo Mortensen) isn’t evil in the way criminals are depicted traditionally. He just doesn’t care about anyone but himself. People, including his pregnant wife, are only valuable insofar as they amuse him. When confronted with how despicable his behavior is, he deflects skillfully on how well others have it and how he’s never gotten the breaks. This is pretty transparent on screen, but I’ll bet most of us have heard the chronic losers in our lives say those lines almost verbatim.
Sorry I just rewatched Numb and I see it’s not really appropriate for your needs. There’s some slight nudity and brief sex scenes. Still if anyone wants to know about depersonalization or detachment Matthew Perry does a fine job of it.
Nitpick
While I havent watched Benny & Joon for years, I thought Johnny Depp’s character was more that just simply eccentric, maybe having a moderate case of autism or something similar—I don’t recall if it was directly spelled out in the movie, but I am pretty sure he was supposed to have had some mental health issues of own…
I don’t know that any movie I’ve seen, other than some documentaries with real mentally ill people, has ever had a truly realistic representation of mental illness. People who are really mentally ill are almost unwatchable in a visceral sense. Mental illness depicted in the movies is almost always far more scrubbed clean and less messy than real life.
Within limits "The Madness of King George" did a good job with his take on that affliction.
A biopic of Diane Arbus would have been a great opportunity to use bipolarism as a theme, (and given Vincent Van Gough a respite) but that won’t happen, since they’ve already made Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus as a stylish icky-fest. Take that, complacent 1950’s America.
I’d like to second this - both as a movie-lover, and as someone who has a family member with Tourette’s. What I love is how much it effects the family - you just don’t understand what’s going on, and even though you love the person, it’s hard to just keep smiling and saying everything’s ok (especially when you’re a kid).
The Soloist.
Except for the synesthesia, I thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal of the real life challenges of homeless schizophrenics. And Foxx nailed the more intangible, less dramatic “feel” of what it can be like to talk to an untreated schizophrenic.
Speaking of Johnny Depp, Secret Window (2004) might fill the bill.
Oh, I know. The Piano Player, a French film from 2001. I warn you that it’s a bit disturbing, though.
I hate saying it, but why worry about foul language? Anyone who is easily offended by obscenity probably shouldn’t go into psych nursing to begin with (I’ve worked on a locked in-patient ward for over ten years - even the KIDS swear like sailors).
One of the theater classes at the school where I teach staged a production of The Boys Next Door, about four men with various mental problems who live together and are looked after by a social worker. The play was really great–very funny but also quite serious at times. I happened upon a film adaptation on television the other day with Nathan Lane and Robert Sean Leonard, and I didn’t get to watch it for very long but it looked pretty faithful to the play. I don’t know if it’s available to buy or rent.
Harold and Maude, a surprisingly sweet comedy about suicidal ideation.
The Seven Percent Solution, in which Dr. Sigmund Freud himself treats Sherlock Holmes for cocaine addiction and the psychological aftershocks of childhood trauma.
Sex and the City 