Profs & Pints Baltimore: Hollywood Psychiatry

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Hollywood Psychiatry,” an examination of big-screen depictions of psychiatry and how they shape our thoughts about mental-health treatment, with Mark Komrad, M.D., a psychiatrist and medical ethicist on the teaching faculty of Johns Hopkins and Tulane universities and the University of Maryland.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-hollywood-psychiatry ]

If we had only movies to teach us about the behavior of psychiatrists, what lessons would we learn?

Explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of Hollywood depictions of psychiatry, and consider how our thoughts about the field are shaped by them, with medical ethicist Mark Komrad, who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on ethical questions raised by euthanasia.

Dr. Komrad will discuss the results of research on how movies affect viewers’ opinions of psychiatry, of psychiatrists, and of what constitutes ethically appropriate behavior in mental health treatment.

He’ll discuss the ethical and unethical behaviors associated with the three major archetypes of psychiatrists that commonly appear in movies, which he labels as “Dr. Decent,” “Dr. Dippy,” and “Dr. Dangerous.” We’ll look at clips from movies that portray psychiatrists engaged in clearly unethical behaviors, movies that try to portray ethical psychiatrists but fail in the attempt, and movies that depict positive examples of appropriate ethical treatment.

To illustrate the harm brought about by inaccurate film depictions, we’ll look at how the public’s contemporary understanding of ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT), an important and valuable method of treatment, has been distorted by movies that depict it in horrifically negative ways.

You’ll emerge from the talk with a clearer understanding of how psychiatrists work with patients and navigate ethical questions, as well as a better ability to distinguish the reality of psychiatry from Hollywood’s myths. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image by Canva.