When Medicine Got it Wrong

NAMI will kick off its 30th anniversary on July 5th at the national convention in San Francisco with a special screening of the PBS documentary When Medicine Got it Wrong. The film, produced by Katie Cadigan, is about NAMI's dramatic grassroots origins and founding as a national organization.

When Medicine Got it Wrong focuses on the years when most doctors blamed parents for schizophrenia or other disorders in their children and the loving parents who rebelled against the conventional wisdom and rejected those theories. Their activism helped revolutionize treatment and spur investment in scientific research, recognizing mental illness as a physical illness involving the brain. The documentary will premiere nationally on PBS in the fall of 2009.

Cadigan hopes the film will inspire people "to evaluate our collective responsibility to treat and care for those among us with severe mental illness... The film will be a success if it sparks dialogue about the current state of our mental health care system." Cadigan's brother, John, lives with schizophrenia and in 2004 she won a NAMI award for producing People Say I'm Crazy, directed by her brother -- the first major film directed by a person living with schizophrenia.