I would like to talk about a web series called “In my head” or “Dans ma tête” for the French translation, which evokes the issue of mental disorders in five videos-cases of less than 10 minutes each.
The first one is the story of Naama who has dysthymic schizophrenia. It all started when she was 14 years old and had a depression. She was having nightmares and a strong feeling of persecution, which led her to close herself and stay at home. She was scarifying herself and trying to kill herself. This period lasted at least a year. When she got to high-school, she consulted the school psychologist, who sent her to the school nurse, who sent her to the hospital emergencies. She was then hospitalised in the psychiatric hospital. At some point, a nurse with her medical file came and Naama saw “dysthymic schizophrenia” written on it. She didn’t know what that meant and got scared so she googled it and saw that this disorder regrouped the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolarity. She had delusions (she was convinced people scoff at her) and hearing and tactile hallucinations (she heard voices and was convinced she had insects crawling under her skin). Concerning bipolarity, she had “high phases” with megalomaniac and erotomaniac delusions (she was persuaded her psychiatrist was in love with her) and “low phases” with depression. Back in high-school, her friends thought her schizophrenia was contagious. Now, when she is hearing voices, she draw mangas or listen to music in order to make them fade. At the end of the interview, Naama realized that a few years back, she wouldn’t have been able to tell her story that way, but now she is stronger and determined to move forward.
The second one is the story of Hélène who has anorexia. When she was 15 years old, weighed 56kg and in less than a year she lost 20kg. At the beginning of the school’s year, she had to go to her doctor to get a medical certificate and after a few questions, he places the word “anorexia” which surprised her. At this passage of the interview, Hélène relives this announcement moment and starts crying, we can feel how hard it was for her and painful to face this word. According to her, this word haunted her for the past 10 years. She started to weigh herself once a week, then twice, then once a day and ended at six times a day. She had to control the number stated on the scale. This number had to be always lower, even if it meant being undernourished. She had to be in control of something. For her, anorexia is also the disorder of lying, toward oneself or others : you have to find many subterfuges not to eat. For some people, self-induced vomiting appears to be the solution, but for Hélène it was hiding her food. She developed many techniques so the content of her plate goes elsewhere than her mouth. She didn’t find herself thin when looking in the mirror, but the electroshock happened with her brother when he was able to go around her arm with his hand. She specifies that her brother really helped her during the disease and didn’t mince its words. At the age of 24, she realized she was about to enter her tenth year of disorder, so she decided to fight it. She now practices yoga, a soft sport practice, and can connect again with her emotions, sensations and muscles. She hasn’t weighed herself for one year, and doesn’t have a scale in her house. When she looks back to the progress she has made, she is proud of her journey and has accepted her disease.
The third video relates Benjamin’s struggle with his obsessive-compulsive disorder (or OCD). At the age of 8, Benjamin was already having rituals and compulsions : to wash his hands or to put his knee on the floor many times. It’s his third grade teacher who alerted his parents, which triggered the diagnostic process. Tennis started as an outlet but turned into a catalyst of his disorders due to the stress of the competitions. People started to scoff at him and he was even more embarrassed and stressed. During his matches, he had to realign his water bottle many times or go touch the fence because if he didn’t do it, he became anxious and heard voices in his head ranging from “if you don’t do it, you will lose your game” to “if you don’t do it, your parents are going to be sick”. Those inner sentences were very hard to bear. He reports that in those moments, the emotion is stronger than you are. He was taken care of by a psychiatrist once a week during 4 years and learned not to refute his emotions but to live with them. For a year, his OCD disappeared but when he got to high-school it slowly came back in the form of mental obsessions (he repeated himself sentences over and over). During his adolescence, he made the mistake of living this situation as a fight against himself and felt a lot of anger toward his body and his mind. Currently, he is better with himself and others and has more energy to devote to other people. It’s seems he has a lot of support now, which helps him to get better and move on.
The fourth story is about Lolita and her cocaine’s addiction. She started an afternoon when a friend of a friend brought back a pouch of cocaine. She considered it as a transition to adulthood. She was confident and very keen to try. She says that she has always been sensitive to odours, fragrances, tastes and she found back that sensation with cocaine. Also, she loved the movement of making her lines and taking the cocaine with her straw. Those are systems which have settled in and made you addict. She knew that when she went out to party she would go to the bathroom to take some cocaine, that they would go directly from cheese to a tray of cocaine, skipping dessert. It immediately became very natural. Every person she met was a consumer, so she didn’t felt guilty herself for taking it. At some point, she realized she became mean, stressed, haughty, eager to her pouch and less willing to share. She became aware she was addict unwittingly : thoughtlessly she decided to stop using but only held three weeks. Then, there was the line of too much during music festival. For three days, she had pain everywhere in her body and in her bones, with a black hole inside her. She took time to think about it, being with herself, feel the loneliness and accept her emotions. A sorting in her friends was done since she was no longer going out. And six months after the summer black episode, while she was at a party where a lot of cocaine was consumed, she hasn’t felt the desire of taking some. She declares that when you are an addict, you stay it for life and you just move an addiction to something else. For her, her addiction has gone from cocaine to vine. Vine gives her intense and alone moments, so she has this energy in saw tooth which fed the addict profile she is. Altogether, her cocaine’s years have lasted seven years, and she doesn’t regret them but remember them as an image. Currently, she feels centered, thanks to vine which has succeeded in taming her.
The last video is about the rapper Guizmo’s malaise. At the age of 14, Guizmo started to drink, and fall in love with it as he says. At the moment of the interview, he has fifteen years of drinking behind him split in ten to forget and five of reassessment throughout he tried to stop. Even today, he is not totally out of his malaise and drinking problem. He describes himself as melancholic and nostalgic, and said that it’s the child inside him who is more hurt than him. During his childhood, his father is in the robbery and drug business, and his mother in odd jobs, so it’s his grandmother who took care of him before he was placed in a shelter by a judge. According to him, behaviour ensues from experience, so the fact that he has slept with mice and cockroaches has impacted who he has become and how he grasped life. That’s why his malaise is so deep and he can’t say what the initiating event is. He has already tried outside help, but it didn’t work and Guizmo doesn’t trust them (he says they’re all swindlers looking for money), he is uncomfortable around them. According to him, the adage “hell is the others” is ironic because hell is you and you’re the only one to blame. At times during the interview, it seems that Gizmo is hiding under is hat and it’s complicated to maintain eye contact. He acknowledges he has positively evolved, even if he still has progress to make for reducing his alcohol and smoke consummation. His wife, step family and family, his kids have allowed him to get out of his self-destructive spiral. Guizmo tells his life story without filter which is not the case of every renowned artists, by fear of raising this still taboo subject.
I found this web series interesting and well-made, they put humans-beings at the centre and it’s caring with the protagonists. The interviewer seems delicate with every people she records and is attentive. I also like the aesthetic of the editing, with the colourful geometrical forms around the protagonists. Each of them is interviewed in their personal environments (respectively in Naama’s bedroom, in a park where Hélène is doing her yoga, on a tennis court where Benjamin is playing with his friend, in Lolita’s vines and on Guizmo’s sofa). It is the interviewer who goes out to meet the people, and not the way around. This web series allows the general public to inform themselves regarding mental disorders and maybe a better understanding and acceptation of this difference.
Link to see the videos : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7LkbX0v-QQ&list=PLE7XZO5PXeLX1PSevaRfhCPxpaDBcaELC
Words I have learned :
– scoff at : se moquer de
– undernourished : sous alimentée
– he didn’t mince its words : il ne mâchait pas ses mots
– outlet : exutoire
– ranging from … to … : allant de … à …
– to be keen : être désireux de
– haughty : hautaine
– unwittingly : à son insu
– taming : dressé
– reassesment : remise en question
– swindlers : escrocs
– renowned : réputé