A crisis addressed on PBS’ ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness’
It’s not a surprise that today’s youth are facing a mental health crisis given all the challenges they face, now compounded by the omnipresence of social media. Their daily struggles are brought to light in unvarnished fashion in a documentary on PBS.
“Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness,” a two-part, four-hour film from co-directors Erik and Chris Ewers and executive producer Ken Burns that premieres Monday and Tuesday, June 27 and 28 (check local listings), features the accounts of people ages 11-27 who live with mental illness, as well as those of the family, friends, teachers and health care professionals in their lives.
Their challenges are varied, ranging from addiction and substance abuse to hallucinations, thoughts of suicide and feelings of joylessness. Some accounts could be very dark but all those interviewed had one thing in common: They
were more than happy to share their stories.
“This younger generation understands,” Erik Ewers explains, “that the true path to mental health wellness is speaking out and speaking up. They’ve been through their storm, they’ve been through their torment for years, sometimes. And then they finally get it that by talking about it, by letting people understand how they feel and what they went through from their perspective ... it provides healing.”
While the first night of the documentary explores mental illness through the experiences of the young, the second looks at diagnosis, treatment, stigma, criminalization and other issues.
One section in the first half touches on how to explain depression, with one interviewee saying that it was like you knew how to swim, yet were drowning but you don’t die.
It also talks about how mental illness is a nature versus nurture proposition, where a given event might drive one person into depression but not another.