Our Committee has rented the Beacon Theater in Burns Lake on Thursday October 10th from 1 – 2:30 pm to screen a very important film featuring people around the world with mental health issues. The website for “Hidden Pictures” is at :

 

 http://www.hiddenpicturesfilm.com/

 

I am hoping we get enough people to attend this highly acclaimed film- and not just folks who happen to live in the Burns Lake area.  I am so very concerned about those many people who suffer from severe and persistent disorders such as schizophrenia, bi-polar, and clinical depression. And it’s not just the people with the illnesses who suffer but family members, friends and sometimes whole neighborhoods. There’s just too many horrific incidents occurring on the daily news lately. Just yesterday a woman with a one-year-old baby in her car attempted to ram the entrance to the White House in Washington DC. As armed police and militia swarmed around assuming it was a terrorist attach, she drove off at high speed to where she was eventually shot to death at the wheel of her car.Amazingly the baby was still alive and rescued. 

 

The TV news report ended with the statement that the woman suffered from “mental health” problems. No surprise there . As more war and other “real life” violence is featured on the news, so do the hallucinations and frightening delusions symptomatic of mental illness in some sufferers [just a few] also accelerate. [That’s my story anyway- not necessarily true.] 

 

I do know that the mentally ill perpetrator often  turns out NOT to be an “raging avenger” as such; his delusions may have sprung from a perceived sense of overwhelming fear- or possibly a fantasy about saving the world from evil – that sort of thing. My son once told me there’s no way one can make sense of a mind that’s in a state of psychosis.

 

Anyway PLEASE attend this movie. Our Committee has been focusing mostly on assisting those with addiction problems- which is good because that’s a big big problem here in small town Northern BC. And many of us can relate to people with addiction issues. But mental health issues are more invisible as too many people suffer in silence – in isolation,- too often undiagnosed, untreated, sometimes living with family members and friends in quiet despair. That is unfair. Everyone deserves a chance for a half decent quality of life. Sorry for being so long-winded. I get that way once in awhile. Sincerely Doris