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"Guilty Except for Insanity" follows the journeys of five people who enlist the insanity defense after being charged with serious crimes. The documentary portrays the circumstances surrounding their crimes and the dilemmas they confront as they enter the Oregon State Hospital (pictured) under the "guilty except for insanity" plea.
Site of the filming of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," based on the novel by Ken Kesey, the Oregon State Hospital has been the focus of intense controversy, including charges by the U.S. Department of Justice of massive civil rights abuses of patients. This documentary tells a different side of the story - one that captures broader national trends in community mental health services.
Through footage shot at the hospital and interviews with patients and staff, the film shows how these patients had fallen deep into troubled waters before being caught in the raggedy "safety net" of jails, courts, and, finally, the state hospital. And in following the compelling stories of these patients, the documentary also tells a disturbing tale of political neglect and public paranoia concerning the mentally ill.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From the documentary website:
