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Having challenged the medical establishment’s view of ‘mental illness’ throughout his career as a clinical psychologist,
Rufus May
discusses the making of the Channel 4 film Mad
Leo Regan came across me when he was looking into making a film on Mad Pride. That’s when he heard about me as ‘this mad psychologist’.
I work with people who get defined as ‘mentally ill’. But I don’t see them as having faulty brains and in need of strong medication. I believe madness and distress is a result of having been on the receiving end of various forms of social injustice. Unless we deeply listen to people, we will be denying their humanity and potential for recovery. Instead of encouraging people to suppress their minds with drugs, I introduce people to alternative methods of calming the mind and expressing difficult feelings, from shadow boxing to chanting out loud. I’m coming at this from my own experience of madness and recovery. At 18, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly given powerfully sedating drugs, which I was told I would have to take for the rest of my life. My recovery came from a good friend sticking by me and believing in me, and finding places to express myself creatively and help others. I eventually trained as a psychologist, to challenge the status quo and argue for a better approach. The modern day emphasis on brain chemicals and the prescription of psychiatric drugs is generally an obstacle to understanding and helping people to make sense of their distress and confusion and move on. However, the might of the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment mean it’s difficult to get a debate going about the social trend of trying to drug away our pain.
Madness and distress is a result of having been on the receiving end of various forms of social injustice
So when Leo became interested in filming my work I was keen to give it a go. When he warned me I would soon sick be of him, I did not know what he meant. Eighteen months later, I now have a clearer idea! Leo always wants more. He wants to be able to get to the heart of the subjects he covers. He once turned up at my house at three in the morning. I was really worried about the safety of someone I was trying to help and he wanted to film me in that state: ‘great,’ I thought to myself. Making documentaries about mental health is tricky; the camera can be very intrusive and often intensifies people’s sense of paranoia. This did happen in the making of this film, so I was pleased when Leo agreed to acknowledge this in the film. Usually, filmmakers never mention this. The film follows the story of a junior doctor who started to hear voices. She could not tell her doctor, or it would definitely have been the end of her medical career. So I worked with her without any medication to teach her how to live with the voices and recover so that she could get on with her medical practice. We used the actor Ruth Wilson to play the junior doctor. The use of dramatic reconstruction allows us to tell truths that otherwise would be impossible to tell. I think it’s a ground-breaking film. It shows the public, for the first time, what the taboo experience of voice-hearing is really like, and the huge obstacles people face once employers find out they have had mental health problems.
