The Truth about Schizophrenia: A Review of the film The Soloist

by Barbara Harris Whitfield

I sometimes work clinically with schizophrenics. The film The Soloist shows us the truth about working with severely mentally ill people. David, the man who runs the shelter for the homeless, honestly spoke the truth with his stance that is opposite of what the Pharmaceutical Industry, most of psychiatry and the legal system try to make us believe. David was my hero in this movie.
    
Although the movie goes quickly over Jamie Foxx's childhood trauma and losses, they are still there, i.e. no father and the truck on fire represent some of the traumas that created his illness. Homeless people with mental illness did not come from healthy childhoods. Almost all came from repeated childhood trauma. (See New Zealand Psychologist John Read, PhD, and colleagues, the ACE Study from the CDC, and Charles Whitfield's book The Truth about Mental Illness, 2004.)
    
Hollywood did not cover over the painful truths in this story. The mother and sister of Jamie Foxx's character were good people, and that comes through, but they couldn't prevent his wounding. At the end of the film, we are told there are "90,000 Homeless people in Los Angeles." We walked out of the theater overwhelmed with that figure and uplifted by this true story.
    
If you're interested in the truth about schizophrenia, there is an excellent DVD documentary called "Take These Broken Wings: Recover from Schizophrenia without Medication," by Daniel Mackler. I highly recommend viewing it.