Sick: A Documentary Wallpapers

Produced through the social justice program at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Printed in 2012. Histories of mental health care are usually characterized as progress from unkind prison-like warehousing of the mad from the 1700’s to modern educated, caring, and efficient treatment. Yet, that progress was punctuated with critical views that indicate that institutional needs frequently over-ride humane treatment, and this documentary is part of the narrative. “Sick” is a comparison of the modern experience by teenagers to the idea of “the complete institution” as developed by sociologist Erving Goffman in his 1961 collection of essays titled “Asylums”.