- Welcome to Independent Lens .
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut .
The title of tonight's film is Bedlam .
It's been called the first documentary
to explore the tragic gutting of resources
for those suffering from mental illness
and has been described as an intimate look
at America's mental health crisis.
As a young psychiatrist in Los Angeles in the late 1980s,
Dr. Ken Rosenberg watched in shock as state mental hospitals
closed at an alarming rate
leaving many patients with nowhere to go.
Forty years later,
one in five adults suffer from mental illness
and the largest mental institution
in our country today,
according to Rosenberg's book of the same title,
is the L.A. County Jail.
Dr. Rosenberg, along with producing partner Peter Miller,
took five years to research this film
by visiting ERs, jails, and homeless shelters
to tell the stories of the mentally ill.
Through his latest effort, Dr. Rosenberg show us
that the crisis we face is not that mental illness exists...
it's that due to political neglect and funding cuts,
we lack the capacities to care properly
for those who suffer from it.
The subject of mental illness
has long been on Rosenberg's radar,
he's made several films on the topic
and lost his sister to the disease, as well.
He's won a Peabody Award
and had his films featured on HBO and PBS.
Bedlam starts now, on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.