One thing that is true about me is that I love to watch television programs that show you the reality of our society. Shows like Trauma: Life In The ER and COPS place their viewers right in the middle of some of this world’s worst disasters and most horrific situations – while showing us the anguish, pain and torment that others endure. Being a fan of these types of shows – I have seen so many of them that I have lost count. But of all the shows of this type that I have ever seen – none effected me as profoundly as America Undercover’s Bellevue: Inside Out.

The documentary was filmed in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital over a twelve month period. During the ninety minute documentary, we are introduced to several of Bellevue’s “residents” and quickly discover the reason that they are at Bellevue. Some of the individuals we meet voluntarily admitted themselves because they realized that they are in need of some help – and some were brought there against their will because they have been declared “a danger to themselves and others” and have been brought to Bellevue as a “last resort”.

As I met each one of Bellevue’s “residents” – I was more and more shocked, horrified – and amazed at what they were going through – and even more curious as to what brought them to this point in their lives.

The first person we meet is Brian. A former student who aspired to be – of all things – a psychologist, failed his senior year in school because of some sort of clerical error – and as a result, now spends his existence in and out of mental institutions and his days and nights yelling the same four lines over and over again. At the top of his lungs at any given moment – he will yell out loud how he “hates this place”, and how “nothing works here” and how “the medications don’t work” and how he has “been here for seven years”. As I watched him shout these same four sentences over and over again – sometimes for an hour straight – I couldn’t help but wonder what goes through his mind as he does this. What possible justification is he giving himself while he stands in front of people and shouts these words – and when he stops – what prompts him to do it again?

After we meet Brian, we are introduced to Ann, who has a history of schizophrenia and was brought into Bellevue because she punched through a glass window so she could grab a picture of President Clinton. Very calmly, she tells the doctors that she does not want to go home to someone named “Keith” because all he wants is sex. Then – almost in the middle of her own sentence – she says that she does not want to be at the hospital – but instead – wants to go home to Keith. At one point, she got so agitated that she hit one of the doctors and had to be strapped to a bed. As I watched this total stranger lie there strapped to a bed in a mental institution crying hysterically, I wondered if she ever thought in her life that she would wind up where she was at that moment – and how she feels now that she did?

The next person we meet is Connie, who we are introduced to as she is talking to a doctor. As the dialogue progresses between her and the doctor, her thoughts become more and more erratic and displaced. She begins by showing a cartoon drawing of a character that she believes she is – and then claims that she is the one who created all the computer systems for laptop computers and that she is the president of a laptop computer company and came there to help them. Needless to say – she was involuntarily committed.

The more people we met, the more enthralled I became with this amazing documentary. Watching these people go through everything from shouting repetitive sentences to ramble incoherent gibberish – to fight and scream to the point of restrainment made me thank God that I am the person I am today. Here I am living in a duplex apartment working for the Mayor of the City of New York driving a brand new car that was given to me for free – and dating an absolutely incredible woman – and here are these people that are institutionalized and not at all a productive member of society because they cannot function normally. What is the difference between them and me? More importantly – what is the one event in these people’s lives that turned them into what they are now? And most importantly – why can’t they summon the inner strength to overcome it?

We have all had events take place in our lives that have been so traumatic that they made us cry, they have disrupted our daily routines – and even made us question our very existence. But despite how traumatic the event was – we have summoned the strength to put the event behind us and move on with our lives because we knew that we had to. Why can’t they do the same?

There are two instances during this addicting documentary that we are introduced to two different people who I classify as the true casualties of mental illness – the loved ones of the patients. First, we meet Brian’s mother who once had a son that was in school and trying his hardest to make her proud – and now – he is confined to a mental institution because he can’t stop yelling in public. We then meet the wife of a patient named Bruce. Bruce’s wife had to commit her husband because while he was once an executive with a good job and a rational grip on society – he has now become so introverted that all he does twenty-four hours a day is masturbate to pornographic images. Imagine this woman as a teenage girl dreaming for the big wedding and hoping that someday her prince will come – and then having to commit him?

Another disturbing thing that I noticed during the program was that no matter the patient the doctors were treating, no matter the reason they were at Bellevue – and no matter how much some of the patients protested – the doctor’s diagnosis was always the same – high doses of medication.

It absolutely sickened me to sit there and watch each patient get “drugged up” with so many different medications that the doctors believe will make them better. How can drugs always be the answer? If one patient shouts the same thing over and over, another patient named Claire thinks that she is being fed radiation by the CIA, another patient named Angela spends her days dancing by herself and crying over the death of her father, and another patient is so addicted to masturbation that his own wife had to commit him – how can these doctors actually think that the same drug can be the answer to all of those different problems?

Even more disgusting then giving the patients the drugs was the reaction of the doctors when the patients refused to take them. The man who had the porno addiction actually took his doctor to court because he did not want to take the medication anymore. When the court sided with the patient – the doctor stated for the record that he was worried about what he would read in the paper the next day after he was released and off his meds because the doctor believed that his patient was – you guessed it – “a danger to himself and others”. Another patient named Jerry who has an alcohol and drug problem told the doctors that he did not want to take his pills because they made him groggy. After eventually convincing Jerry to take his medication – we are shown a confused, slurring and half asleep Jerry being told by his doctor that he is making progress. How is that progress? Even Brian, the one who repeats the sentences, has been on over a dozen different anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and mood stabilizers – ever think maybe that’s why he screams? – I would.

Besides the medication, putting these people in these types of institutions can’t be helping them either. All these patients get from these homes are four walls to hold them in, more drugs then a crackhouse – and a visit from a doctor who either refers them to a different institution – or takes them off of one drug and puts them on another. Did these doctors ever think of asking their patients why the feel the way they feel? What they want to do with their lives? Or maybe how they feel they can overcome this tough time in their lives and become a productive member of society again?

The patient that affected me the most was Cheryl, who was transferred to Bellevue by a group home called Libby House where she was living. They transferred her to Bellevue because she was declared by the staff at Libby House – surprise – “a danger to herself and others”. While at Bellevue, this constantly distraught woman who always seemed to be crying displayed behavior of someone who is very self-condemning and extremely afraid of abandonment. At one point, she asks the doctor if he had “the hots” for another female patient and that she was afraid that he wanted to seduce that other patient. During another session with her doctor, she confesses to him that she worries that when he leaves after their meetings – that he will never return to talk to her – despite the fact that the doctor visits her regularly each and every day. It was towards the end of the documentary that she tells her doctor that she desperately wants to return to Libby House, and can the doctor please call the group home and ask if they will take her back. The doctor calls Libby House at Cheryl’s request – and they reject her. If Libby House rejecting a woman with severe abandonment fears is not enough – Bellevue then informs Cheryl that they are transferring her to another group home in Rockland County because they claim they could not keep her there because she needed “long term care that they could not provide”. No wonder this woman is so afraid that everyone she turns to is going to eventually walk away.

When the documentary ended, I spent a little over an hour in total shock over what I just saw. All I could do was sit there and try and fathom how people who started off in life as innocent, pure – and sane as you and I have become so unable to survive and function in society – that they are permanently institutionalized and constantly overmedicated. Furthermore, I can’t fathom how these institutions and the doctors that run them think that drugs are the cure-all to everyone’s different and individual problems. And even worse then that – I can’t imagine these people having no choice but to spend the rest of their lives imprisoned by the mental illness that cages them inside their own bodies and forces them to live out their lives as slaves to the irrational and illogical thoughts in their minds, remain non-existent and unproductive members of society – and be completely and absolutely powerless to save themselves from the daily horrors that they endure – while the rest of us live out our happy and fruitful lives to the fullest – never hearing their cries of pain – or their screams for help.

Wow.