Netflix Documentary

I will admit it....I am a sucker for a good documentary.  Netflix, I find, typically has some good ones.  What I look for are human interest stories.  Last night I watched a good one that explores the layers of mental illness through the eyes of someone suffering from severe bi-polar disorder.  It's called "God Knows I'm Here".

Without giving too much away, the true story examines the last weeks and months of it's subject Linda.  Linda has a similar story as many Americans with mental illness in that she begins to display erratic behavior and then has a love/hate relationship with medications and the friends and family trying desperately to help her.  In their own words these friends and family members describe the girl they knew, and the woman they saw toward the end that they barely recognized.  Her daughter described her as both "Mom" and "Linda".  Mom was rational and loving while controlled by medications, and "Linda" was paranoid and irrational when she was not.  

The documentary also briefly touches on the facility and doctors that tried to help her but eventually had little choice but to release her, without even the knowledge of the family.  This dynamic calls to question a person's right to have choices about their own care even when they are seemingly incapable of making good ones.  A doctor describes these individuals as "drowning in their own rights".  

What makes this documentary truly fascinating however, is that she creates a journal to describe her own decline and pending death.  In the fall of 2008 she finds herself living in an abandoned farmhouse, eating only apples from an apple tree and drinking water from the creek running on the property.  Its heartbreaking to hear her write that she is waiting to be rescued, as though she is trapped, when there is a house directly across the road.  She intentionally hides to not be seen and yet is awaiting rescue.  You begin to realize that the rescue she wants is from her own mind.  Amidst paranoia, a relationship with a purely fantasized husband, and her be comforted by the solitude, she cannot truly figure out her situation.

While there isn't much to correlate directly to Tyler, it is a fascinating study in mental health.  There are so many layers to mental health issues, and this certainly captures many of those.  By looking at the role the family played, the role she herself played, the institution, the current patient rights, etc. it provokes interesting discussion.

Give it a look and let me know what you think!

Be well and God bless.

Tom