Mental: FOX TV's New Summer Show

As a nurse, I've often felt if only people could see inside a Behavioral Health Unit and see that the line between being mentally ill and mental health is so thin, there would be more compassion towards those who are suffering. I've also said that a glimpse into the stories of those on a Behavioral Health Unit would make for a good TV show. I think FOX must have heard my discussions. Mental on May 26, 2009 FOX introduced this show as part of its summer season. The show is a one-hour medical series staring Chris Vance (Prison Break) and Annabella Sciorra (The Sopranos). Chris Vance plays Dr. Jack Gallagher, is the newly appointed to the position of Director of Mental Health Services at a Los Angeles hospital. He has a history of working with Doctor's without Borders as well as in a clinic that used unique effect approaches to patients with behavioral health issues (mental health issues).

Jack's method to psychiatric medicine is radically unorthodox compared to how the Mental Health Services at the LA Hospital functioned prior to his arrival. When a schizophrenic patient is admitted to the hospital is brought into the facility naked, aggressive and delusional the police officers and the staff is taken aback as how to handle it. As every good psychiatric (psych) nurse knows, this is not the time to challenge the patient's delusions. This is the time you enter in. Well, Jack fully enters in has he sheds his cloths to help calm the patient. He doesn't care about professionalism or propriety, only of helping the patient. Although this gesture may endear the viewing audience and calm the patient, it does nothing for getting the staff onboard with his new different approach.

After Jack shocked the staff with his striptease act, he further upsets them by including patients into the sacrosanct meeting of the team meetings. He tells the staff that the psychiatric hospital is more about "them", meaning the patients, than it is about "us", the staff. Jack states in a staff meeting that MD means medical doctors not medical deities. Certainly, this was a statement that certainly resonated with many viewers.

His unusual methodology causes anger to flare on occasion in some of his co-workers and causes conflict with his conservative boss, Nora Skoff (Sciorra). Nora and he have had a romantic past. Towards the end of the show, we begin to gain understanding as to what makes Jack tick. While in his apartment he gets a phone call. He seems to know who is on the other end of the phone though the audience isn't privy to the conversation. He is speaking with "Becky". He asks about he needs and if she needs money. She hangs up and he appears visibly shaken. My guess is she has schizophrenia. Is it the woman he almost married or is it another person from his past? Time will tell.

In an interview with Chris Weaver for BC Blogcritic Video, Chris Vance says this about Jack, "He doesn't view any kind of patients with a mental health disorder as [having] anything wrong with them. He just understands that they've got a different state of mental health. All he does really, and this is what I found so fascinating, is to try and help them, get inside their heads and try to find the best way of bringing them back to function in what we call normal or conventional reality".

In some ways the show seems to be a cross between the medical drama House, Lie to Me, and The Mentalist. At times Jack is crawling in and out of windows much like House's lackeys and not missing anything in his keen observation, as in Lie to Me or TheMentalist.

The show depicted a rather archaic view of the old psychiatric system. New psychiatric facilities are more inclusive of patients in team conferences. Though there is room for improvement, I don't feel the view of a psychiatric facility was fully justified. Conversely, I have worked in worse.

The show walks a fine line between being fun and entertaining. After all, it is a television show. However, it does not to present the disease such as schizophrenia and other mental illness responsibly. I hope that the show continues to do the excellent job that it did during the first show. Schizophrenia was the main disease focus of the first show. It was accurately depicted and dealt with in a sensitive manner. I hope it continues and I don't want to have to crawl through the screen and strangle the writers for damaging the gains that have been made in the public understanding of mental health issues.

For those that missed the premiere, Fox will be repeating the show on Friday, May 26, 2009 at 9:00 pm.

Source:

http://blogcritics.org/video/article/a-talk-with-chris-vance-about/