On Friday I watched Off Label, a film co-directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher that was a part of the Human Rights Film Festival. It was a very moving documentary, following the lives of eight individuals whose lives are severely impacted by the commercialization of medicine. The subjects vary from human guinea pigs to mothers affected by psychiatric studies. It was truly eye opening to see the prevalence of mental illness in the United States and how it is dealt with.
Before the film started, Palmieri advised the audience to “try and look at this film not as strictly an advocacy film,” which definitely opened mine and I’m assuming the rest of the audience’s mind as it cleared our filters. Granted, it was definitely a challenge to not view this as an advocacy film, but what I took away from it was a series of very raw and very moving stories – for the main purpose of storytelling.
I felt a connection with the subjects; I empathized with every one. In the after-showing Q&A, Palmieri said that he filmed many subjects, including people in the professional field, but the eight subjects whose story he chose to tell were the most “static.” Behind their stories was so much raw emotion that was impossible to recreate. These individuals understood the corruption behind the commercialization of medicine, but were victims to it nonetheless. Andrew Duffy, a veteran struggling with PTSD treatment said, “I don’t need medication; I need help. If you give me medication, give me medication that helps.” He has an entire bin of medication that has been prescribed to him, and all he really wants is a support system to talk to. When interviewing a series of young people in Rochester, Minnesota, they were listing off the medications they have been prescribed, and most of them couldn’t even pronounce everything they were taking. It has become such a simple solution for doctors to just prescribe drugs to patients, send them off and say, “I hope these work.”