Rylee McMillan Capstone

The Stigma on Mental Health is a documentary I made for my capstone that questions how a person’s sociocultural background affects their view on mental health and access to care. This documentary follows three subjects: Samira Pope, John Henkel, and Lorraine Ustaris. I questioned them on their experiences with therapy, their thoughts on generational lines of trauma and bias, as well as what they believe the stigma on mental health is, why it’s there, and how as a society we can work to reduce it. My documentary idea came to me after working on a unit in science and society with Mr. Henkel that was about our sociocultural perspectives. That is when I realized I wanted to create something similar to that for my capstone project. I wanted to raise awareness of how limited the knowledge on mental health care and access is and find out what the contributing factors were to that disproportion of knowledge. This documentary is a safe space for people to learn and connect with. Not everyone is taught that mental health is health care or that it should be. And with this film I think the stigma surrounding the so-called ‘requirements’ for normal mental health care can be questioned, challenged, and possibly changed little by little if people continue to spread awareness to this tainted view on what it is to have a healthy mind and how to get there.

Link to my documentary-> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5r95V-hic9-nWcTbhFcl44A_HrMHyPl/view?usp=sharing