Only if you want a piece of anti psychiatry Scientology backed propaganda. Frances Farmer was never lobotomized as depicted in the film.
Maybe I’ll properly check it out. My job is pretty much working with homeless schizophrenics, and the trailer gave the impression that he is rescued by the other guy, and he was made palatable by the fact he had this gift. In my experience, lotta folks don’t have a ‘gift’ so no one gives a shit about them, and sadly it’s rare that anyone gets rescued. Little Plastic Ninja, it sounds from your spoiler that I’ve misjudged it.
How about Pi, about paranoia and obsession?
Intense soundtrack, too.
It’s old, but A Woman Under the Influence (1974) with Gena Rowlands was thought-provoking, illustrating the fine line between eccentricity and mental illness. The character Mabel is committed to a psychiatric hospital by her husband – possibly more because he’s embarrassed by her behavior than because she presents any danger to her family or herself. When she comes home, she’s different.
Gena Rowlands won a Global Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in this film.
beckwall, these are legal adults that you are teaching. You may choose to warn them if you find the language offensive, but remind them that if they go into psychiatric nursing, it comes with the territory.
You don’t have to answer to their parents. They are not children.
I believe that Natalie Wood made a film called The Cracker Factory that might be helpful.
Someone mentioned The Snakepit. It is excellent. But so much has changed since that film was made. I really think that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is superb. It might be especially appropriate since the emphasis is on what NOT to be if you are a psychiatric nurse. It would be a much better teaching tool.
Harold and Maude is not a realistic film about mental illness – as much as I love it.
My mother was a Psych Nurse and Nursing Professor. She was very intolerant of inaccurate portrayals of mental illness. She used The Dream Team in some of her nursing classes and group sessions. It is a comedy, and a little older, but she liked it.
The Shining. That’ll teach 'em about Jack Nicholson, the whippersnappers.
Lars and the Real Girl-delusional disorder
Marnie-kleptomania and personality disorder
I feel Apocalypse Now fits in at some level.
I wouldn’t call The Soloist a great movie, but I’d check it out for educational value, if only because most of the people playing homeless, mentally ill individuals actually are. The Lamp Community, where the movie was mainly filmed, is a real place, and a number of scenes feature the residents talking about their illness.
The wonderfully creepy SF drama Dark City has a strong undercurrent of paranoia, homicidal mania and obsession.
I just mentioned Dark Days (2000) over in the documentary thread. It’s about the permanent homeless population in the tunnels beneath New York City. Some of those people have serious mental problems.
I’m not a Sandra Bullock fan but I have to say I thought that was a really good movie.
Note that the protagonist was a real person. He was not synesthetic, although I have read a couple of blog items from people with synesthesia who said that the sequence in the movie accurately depicts what they experience.
I can’t imagine I’m the only person who initially thought this was referring to 28 Days Later.
Two thoughts:
The Aviator - good movie, and also deals with some issues of being embarrassed/aware of going nuts
Pollock - again, great movie, but I’m not sure exactly what was wrong with him mentally, except for the substance abuse
There’s The King of Hearts, where a British soldier (deserter?) winds up in a town taken over by escaped mental patients.
In 'night Mother Anne Bancroft tries to talk her daughter (Sissy Spacek) out of killing herself and in A Woman Under the Influence, IIRC, Gena Rowlands goes fetchingly and poetically bonkers. ETA: sorry laina_f, I missed your post.
Two from Alan Parker: Birdy (1984) and Pink Floyd The Wall (1982), the latter of which I especially can’t believe I did not think to mention before.
Would The Rocky Horror Picture Show fit in? But you’d have to take the students to a midnight showing and probably pay more attention to the audience than the movie.
We had a Movies of 1964 thread a short time ago and I was going to mention this one but forget to. In any case, although the OP wasn’t looking for old movies, Lilith, starring Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, and Peter Fonda, is at least interesting in its depiction of how mental illness was treated in the early 60s (at least among people who could afford to have their family members sent to a expensive private sanitarium for care). One thing it has in its favor is it doesn’t make the mistake many movie and TV shows did at the time of confusing schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder. There are also dramatizations of extreme depression and PTSD (although it wasn’t called that at the time). However, it’s depictions of homosexuality and promiscuity (i.e., nymphomania) are rather dated now.
Nobody has mentioned Kathy Bates’s Oscar winning portrayal of Annie Wilkes in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery? Hello?
The Informant! Based on a true story, but I can’t say for sure whether the portrayal of mental illness is accurate.