Published on Feb 4, 2012
Get unprecedented full access to New York City's Bellevue Hospital, the country's most renowned psychiatric emergency center that treats as many as 7000 individuals annually. This documentary feature takes viewers for an exclusive tour inside the locked psychiatric wards of America's largest public hospital, where they will have the opportunity to observe the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, and always grueling struggle faced by the doctors and patients wrestling with mental illness.
Produced in 1998/1999, first shown in 2001.
A schizophrenic woman goes berserk and is strapped to a gurney. An actor is medicated after threatening to jump out a window. A paranoid woman insists that the CIA is trying to "zap" her. A homeless man eats the pages of his Bible. These are some of the cases confronting the doctors and staff at the psychiatric unit of Bellevue hospital--the oldest and most famous hospital in America. This documentary takes a never-before-seen look inside the psychiatric emergency room and treatment areas of this New York hospital. In addition to capturing the high drama and frequent chaos that ensues when mentally ill men and women are brought in, the documentary offers some sobering insights into some of the treatments that Bellevue provides its patients.
The cases:
Brian - History of mixed personality disorder
- yelling when he was brought to hospital
- obsessive-compulsive disorder the degree sever looks like schizophrenia
that it looks like psychotic
(10:34)
Briann's Mom - "I am painfully shocked. I like to see my kids healthy and happy and not in a hospital."
(17:52)
Connie - History of bi-polar disorder
- arrested patient was confused, disoriented and not making any sense. Disorganized in speech and behavior, observed grandiosity and paranoia.
- declared " a danger to herself and others" and was admitted to the psychiatric ward
(12:28)
Chery - History of schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder
(29:50)
Jamie - History of bi-polar disorder
Dan - History of schizophrenia
Clare - 30 year History of chronic paranoid schizophrenia
