Director: Douglas Blush, Lisa J. Klein (What A Ball, Cult Culture: The Poseidon Adventure)
Producers: Kristin Chambers, Lisa Klein
MPAA Rating: NR
Running time: 89 min.
Illness is never easy to deal with but mental illness is particularly difficult. Here’s an illness that has no easy fix. It doesn’t manifest as a rash you can treat and there’s no little pill that will make a sufferer feel better but often it can manifest in very physical ways. Douglas Blush and Lisa J. Klein’s Of Two Minds sets off to explore the tricky rollercoaster world of bipolar disorder.
Focusing on a handful of individuals, Klein and Bush delve into the manic highs and suicidal lows of the disorder one that, for many of the individuals interviewed, was not diagnosed until later in their adult lives. Cheri Keating explains how she was diagnosed at a free clinic in LA and her experience living her youth as a sufferer and not knowing what she was suffering from. Journalist Liz Spikol and architect and artist Michael Peterson share similar stories of rollercoaster emotional highs and lows that often brought them to the brink of death.
Of Two Minds follows these individuals as they share their stories. They recount their lowest moments and also the highs, the manic energy that makes you feel invincible and alive and capable of doing anything and how those moments of high energy can also be the most dangerous. While in this state the mind loses reservations and people will do things that they generally wouldn’t, causing them to end up in compromising situations that they sometimes don’t remember or would rather not remember when they finally come down. It’s interesting and heartbreaking that the sufferers, all of whom hail from different walks of life, share such similar experiences.
