Psychosis HIT launches with Psychosis on Screen film season at Watershed

The Psychosis Health Integration Team (HIT) is marking its official launch with a series of film screenings at the Watershed during June called Psychosis on Screen.

Psychosis on Screen is a season of three contemporary films depicting various experiences of psychosis. It aims to uncover the creativity often inherent in psychosis and to develop a shared, more human understanding of these sometimes frightening experiences.

There are many different perspectives about psychosis, a term that encapsulates many different human experiences – from voice hearing to other unusual beliefs. Sometimes people having these experiences need support from specialist mental health services. Psychotic experiences can help reveal the limitations of current science and medical knowledge. How we understand such psychological difficulties has a rich and complex history, influenced by developments in medicine and psychotherapy, and by changes in social attitudes to madness and human distress. We know that people with serious mental health problems are more likely to be socially excluded, unemployed and have a shorter life expectancy than the general population.

Working together, Bristol Health Partners and Watershed have put together this season to increase awareness of psychosis. Psychosis on Screen ties in with the launch of the Psychosis HIT, which aims to improve the support, treatment, services and lives of people with psychosis in the Bristol area.

Keane (13 June)

Keane, starring Damian Lewis, is bleak and brutally honest. Lodge Kerrigan’s brilliant 2004 drama chronicles the daily rituals of a disturbed man who feels responsible for the abduction of his daughter. An intense character study of a man whose life has been destroyed, leaving him mentally ill. ‘Shock of the Fall’ author Nathan Filer will kick the evening off with an introductory talk.

Every Little Thing (20 June)

1997’s Every Little Thing is directed by French documentarist Nicolas Philibert (Être et Avoir, Land of the Deaf), who sensitively filmed people suffering from mental illness at La Borde, a grand care centre located in a chateau in France. The film will be introduced by Conor McCormack and Simon Downer.

In the Real (27 June)

For the past three years, filmmaker and psychoanalyst in training Conor McCormack has documented Bristol Hearing Voices Network – a self-help group for people who hear voices and have other unusual experiences.

Strange and wonderful, intimate and emotionally affecting, In the Real is an observational collaborative documentary which goes to the heart of the voice-hearing experience. Who, or what, are the voices that only these men can hear? What do they say and what do they mean? And how does hearing voices transform their sense of self and world?

In the Real will be followed by a panel discussion.

There are 20 free tickets available per screening for service users and carers. If you identify as a service user or carer and would be interested in attending, please email [email protected] naming the screening you would like to attend. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

The screening of In the Real is followed by the official launch of the Psychosis HIT. The launch will include a short introduction to the HIT by the Directors, followed by a networking event with refreshments provided.