Thank You for Sharing: Movie Review

 Earlier in August, perhaps due to what the DSM-5 calls “Internet Gaming Addiction,” I lost track of time and found myself again running late to the Sovereign House premiere of Thank You for Sharing, a new documentary by Canadian filmmakers Sonia Zawitkowski and Jenna Taylor.

Waiting on the hot, crowded subway platform fanned the flames of my anxiety, alleviated only momentarily by the jarring transition into the frigid subway, which induced claustrophobia and chills of panic. (Or was the AC too high?) I cycled through a neurotic feedback loop of self-analysis: What if I was so late that I couldn’t find a seat, missed the beginning, and disappointed my friends who were waiting for me?

Upon arrival, I was surprised to find an open bar. So, I self-medicated with a White Claw and chose to disappoint my AA sponsor instead.

I don’t like living or thinking this way, but this is how our current “therapy culture” conditions us. And it’s the mindset that Thank You for Sharing sets out to evaluate and deconstruct. The popular logic suggests that if we’re aware of and open about our mental unwellness, we can destigmatize these conditions for others, empowering them to acknowledge their own problems and seek help. But if this is true, why has our collective mental health worsened the more we know? The film offers a history and a theory.

Two hundred years ago, insane people “ran amok.” They raved in the streets, attacked bystanders, and torched buildings. The public had had enough. Although these individuals differed from other criminals because they lacked awareness of their bad behavior, they still needed to be locked away for society's safety in “hospitals for the nervous.”

However, their madness piqued the interest of a rising class of experts. As the physical landscape changed with the Industrial-Era installation of canals and railroads, so too could human nature be engineered, thought these soon-to-be experts. The cause of madness was elusive, but discoverable, they reasoned. And thus, with great scientific zeal, institutions were formed, theories posited, and experts born.

By the time the world wars were being fought, these experts had concluded that the gas from the shells dropped on young men at war was the cause of their insanity upon returning home. They called it “shell shock.” True enough. But just as detrimental to their sanity as any substance was likely their witnessing the monstrosities of industrialized warfare.

Today, there are no fumes from shell shock, no mass drafting of young men to fight world wars overseas to scar them for life. Yet 42% of Zoomers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition, and nearly 32% of adolescents between 12 and 17 received prescription medication, treatment, and/or counseling for mental health in 2023. The cause of this unnecessary treatment is both sinister and ubiquitous, the film suggests: social media, egged on by a mental-health industrial complex.

Then there’s the role the pharmaceutical industry plays. In her best-seller Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Are Not Growing Up, author Abigail Shrier posits that mediocre clinicians’ overprescribing of medications is influencing a young generation whose cultural currency is trauma and misery.

For a relatively peaceful and affluent time in our country’s history, this mindset is described by the boomerism “snowflake.” It refers to a young, emotionally sensitive person experiencing a crisis of identity over their lack of uniqueness, and compensating with superficial changes, like pronouns and acronyms.

But are snowflakes really insane? Or are they gaslit by an industry of “experts” and just need to be told to lighten up?

In the 80s and 90s, the film tells us, the DSM continued updates with broader definitions for developmental disorders like autism. What some might consider normal neurodiversity and other psychological peculiarities could now be labeled “autistic.” Autism diagnosis rates, for example, have tripled in the New York-New Jersey metro area: 1% in 2000 to 3% in 2016. Was autism always this prevalent? Or have experts simply become better at “detecting” symptoms?

Fast forward to today, and Gen-Z girls with buzzed green haircuts and septum piercings proudly make TikToks listing their institution-approved acronyms of mental unwellness. The film features a montage of them, babbling therapy buzzwords, perhaps as disclaimers for their lack of maturity or as badges of their suitability for future professional counseling roles. (Never trust a person with a septum piercing for advice about mental wellness, in my opinion.)

But there are consequences to “concept creep.” Serious, mind-altering mental illnesses get overlooked in the frenzy to validate uncomfortable (but normal) feelings and prioritize vague initiatives like “mental wellness.”

The reality of serious mental illness, on the other hand, is stark. Freddie DeBoer, a cultural critic with 57k+ followers on Substack, explains in the film that he does not want awareness for his bipolar disorder. It is embarrassing to seek honor and validation for his destructive and paranoid behavior, which alienated him from his family and friends before he finally turned to anti-psychotics that could shrink his brain and shorten his life. He laments his reduced quality of life but knows that if he doesn’t take his medication, his mind could compel him to kill himself.

For people with real mental illness, destigmatization is not a net good. The more destigmatization, the more people come forward with problems that need to be treated. If they don’t have treatable mental illness, a symptom will be pulled from a pool, and the mental-health industrial complex will have a new recurring customer and potentially a new advocate for the mental-health racket on TikTok.

Two hundred years of experts with good intentions have morphed into awareness campaigns, prescription marketing solutions, bureaucratic experts, and victimology. And yet, the causes of bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia remain unknown.

The film provides numerous examples of the industrial health complex's complete societal infiltration, from advertisements for counseling to celebrity testimony on talk shows to local news segments. However, it becomes redundant and stretches the film’s length to the point of losing momentum and audience interest.

The film interviews a range of subjects, from indie lit author Logo Daedalus to Dr. Edward Shorter, historian of medicine. These individuals offer compelling opinions, but the filmmakers end the film with an esoteric ramble from a Canadian professor, fading out on a lengthy philosophical description of the topic of his next book. That was a curious choice.

A stronger ending would have been the interview with Emmett, the recovering alcoholic in Alcoholics Anonymous. He provided the best, most cogent answer for an alternative to the mental-health wellness craze: “Sometimes we just need to talk to a friend.”

Emotions change. Sometimes, suffering needs to be endured, not explained or coddled or addressed with pharmacology and marketing buzzwords. Despite a few rambling interludes, Thank You for Sharing succeeds by picking up the mantle that luminaries like Shrier have carried in examining the mental-health industrial complex—and depicting the young men and women caught up in its machine.

Jonathan Mittiga is a writer in New York City with a background in public health and social work.

https://www.realclearhealth.com/blog/2024/09/03/thank_you_for_sharing_movie_review_1055786.html