"An unintended pregnancy leads to horrific psychological consequences for a teenage girl whose parents force her to get an abortion. When her family seeks counseling for her, she is directed through a mental health institution that exacerbates her problems with harsh, controversial "therapies" in this harrowing film directed by social realist filmmaker Ken Loach. 'FAMILY LIFE' was originally produced for BBC television." -rotten tomatoes
To a certain extent this clip from 'Family Life' reinforces negative stereotypes typically seen in the past , however it can be seen that unlike most moving image recolections of mental illness , we see it from the individuals outlook which makes the audience feel as though what they are viewing is genuine. The main protagonist within the film (Janice Baidon) suffers from schizophrenia. In the 3 minute clip we see both the rational and "normal" Janice , however in the last scene we see of her we see an irational and scared individual, who often refers to herself as "she" regarding what is represented as a second personality.
http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_mmagpast/Rep_Mentill.html
Entertaining madness – representations of mental illness on screen
4. Schizophrenics are people with split personalitiesNorman Bates in Psycho dressing up as his mother to commit murder while his gentler self lives on in ignorance of his crimes is probably the most famous cinema serving of this age-old mental health cliché. The fact that the phenomenon largely derives from a literary source, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) should raise suspicions. It was a 1957 film The Three Faces of Eve, starring Joanne Woodward, that promoted belief in multiple personality disorder (MPD) and a further boost came with the 1973 film Sybil – the tale of a woman with supposedly 16 distinct personalities. When the same story transferred to TV, Sally Field won an Emmy for her portrayal. It has subsequently emerged that many of the so-called ‘personalities’ may have been created by the psychiatrist who took to naming different moods that Sybil manifested during her treatment. Such conditions essentially developed through the interaction between patient and therapist are called ‘iatrogenic’. In the 1990s there was a huge explosion in ‘multiple personality’ (MPD) cases in the USA and to a lesser extent in this country. These were paralleled by an upsurge in cases of forgotten sexual abuse revealed through therapy and belief in widespread satanic cult activities. By 1998 there were over two dozen clinics in America specialising in the treatment of MPD cases. Now the bubble has burst and these clinics have disappeared, revealing the phenomenon essentially to be a fad.
http://www.seemescotland.org.uk/findoutmore/aboutmentalhealthproblemsandstigma/schizophrenia
"The person may experience hallucinations (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting something that does not exist, as if it were real). Hearing voices is the most common hallucination experienced with schizophrenia."
Individuals in fact do not have split personalities as such , it is more of a case of having something telling them in there mind to do things they may usually stay clear of.
The protagonist also appears to be irrational and unpredictable - a representation commonly used. However i do not feel that it is over exagerated by any means, it is a fair portrayal if this without being completely unfair and negative. In some cases due to such hallucinations the predictability of the individuals thoughts and behaviours can become increasingly unpredictable.#
The film in general claimed to be "breaking edge" , as it was at the time , however tp the normal visual eye of the average person today the film is not out of the ordinary in its representations. However in the eyes of a media student i feel that the film was infact realtively ground breaking , unlike simply reinforcing the typical stereotypical views of mental illness , the film allows the viewer to get a close to life account of what it is and shows that mental illness is not as scary as it may be presented as. The film uses some refference to stereotypical ideologies but does not do so in an offensive mannor and is relatively positive unlike a number of other texts.
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