Take These Broken Wings, a feature-length documentary film by director and psychotherapist Daniel Mackler, shows that people can recover fully from schizophrenia without psychiatric medication. According to most of the mental health field, and of course the pharmaceutical industry, this is not possible. How little they know – or want to know! The film centers on the lives of two women – heroes of mine – who both recovered from severe schizophrenia. The film traces the roots of their schizophrenia to childhood trauma and details their successful psychotherapy with gifted clinicians.
The first woman is Joanne Greenberg (fully recovered for fifty years), the bestselling author of I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. The second is Catherine Penney (fully recovered for thirty years), a mental health nurse in California whose healing tale was chronicled by her therapist, Daniel Dorman, MD, in the book Dante’s Cure: A Journey Out of Madness.
Their accounts are interwoven with interviews with giants in the field of schizophrenia recovery. These include Peter Breggin, MD (author, Toxic Psychiatry), Robert Whitaker (journalist, author, Mad in America), and Bertram Karon, PhD (author, Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: Treatment of Choice). Also featured throughout the film are over 100 interview clips of strangers filmed in New York City’s Washington Square Park who share their points of view on schizophrenia.
Here is Daniel Mackler talking about why he made this documentary:
For more information or to purchase the video, please visit here.
