Playlist: Clinical Impressions: Identifying Mental Illness
How long can mental illness stay hidden, especially from the eyes of trained experts? This program rejoins a group of ten adults—five of them healthy and five of them with histories of mental illness—as psychiatric specialists try to spot and correctly diagnose the latter. Administering a series of collaborative and one-on-one tests, including assessments of personality type, physical self-image, and rational thinking, the panel gradually makes decisions about who suffers from depression, bipolar disorder, bulimia, and social anxiety. At the conclusion of the program, the professionals confess to a wariness of their own diagnosis methods, and labels of “sick” and “normal” are seen in a new light. A BBC/Science Channel Co-production. Part 2 of the series How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity. (51 minutes)
Ten volunteers, five of whom are classified as mentally ill, stay in a castle while psychiatrists secretly observe them. Will the scientists be able to accurately diagnose the mentally ill?
A panel of psychiatrists observes ten volunteers to determine which among them has depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, and an eating disorder.
Ten volunteers perform tasks while a panel of hidden psychiatrists observes individuals in the group. Their job is to identify which of the participants have diagnosed mental disorders.
Bi-polar disorder causes dramatic and damaging mood swings. Mania causes euphoria, impatience, and recklessness; depression makes one feel worthless, pessimistic, and sometimes suicidal.
Ten volunteers, five of whom have a history of mental illnesses, will test their body image acceptance. One participant has an eating disorder. This mental illness has the highest death rate among mental disorders.
Looking at photographs of themselves in Lycra, volunteers must adjust a manipulated image of themselves to the size they believe they are. Someone with a mental illness may have a distorted body image.
A panel of psychiatrists correctly diagnoses a volunteer who has an eating disorder. Their conclusions are based on her distorted perception of her own body.
Some mental illnesses can make rational thinking very difficult. In their final test, volunteers engage in a rigged decision-making activity while psychiatrists observe them from their hidden location.
After observing 10 volunteers, five of whom have psychiatric problems, a panel of psychiatrists interviews one of the participants whom they suspect has mental illness. Can they determine who the five are based on their observations?
Psychiatrists discuss the continuum of mental health. Many borderline cases are hard to identify. A panel of psychiatrists judges incorrectly about the mental health of three participants.
Depression keeps a woman out of work for three and a half years. She does not consider herself a happy person. Psychiatrists misdiagnosed her as completely free of any psychiatric disorder based on observation alone.
Social anxiety disorder was easy for a panel of psychiatrists to miss because the person exhibited strong social bonding under observation.
A man with bipolar disorder has severe mood swings. He sought help when he realized his life was in shambles, his relationships were ruined, and he felt empty and hopeless.