Mental Health Event Ideas


Movies/Documentaries
Speakers List

Whether you're the leader of a Student Pugwash chapter or a student interested in organizing a mental health event, you can benefit from the ideas below! Want to learn more about organizing Student Pugwash events on your campus?
Email contact@spusa.org.

Movies

A Beautiful Mind: From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery. (Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database.)

Benny and Joon: A mentally ill young woman finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton. (Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database.)

Frances: Jessica Lange gives a career performance in a role she was born to play: the talented and troubled Frances Farmer. Farmer's awful trajectory travels from bright Seattle girl to 1930s Hollywood starlet to degraded (eventually lobotomized) mental patient. (Synopsis from Amazon.)

Documentary

West 47th Street: Life on the streets of New York City for the poor and homeless is an unforgiving struggle. For those who also battle mental illness, it is marked by the additional pressures of fear, isolation and misunderstanding. " West 47th Street" reveals the human face of mental illness — and the faith and courage with which its victims fight to recover control of their lives. (Synopsis from the Public Broadcasting Service.)

Suggested Speakers

• Thomas Bornemann
  Director of the Mental Health Program
  The Carter Center (GA)

• Ira Burnim
  Legal Director
  Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law (D.C.)

• Lisa Cosgrove
  Clinical and Research Psychologist; Assistant Professor
  University of Massachusetts, Boston

• Michael Friedman
  Director of the Center for Policy and Advocacy
  The Mental Health Associations of New York City and Westchester

• John Gresham
  Senior Litigator
  New York Lawyers for the Public Interest

• Beth Haroules
  Staff Attorney
  New York Civil Liberties Union

• Kim Hopper
  Research Scientist; Assistant Professor
  Columbia University

• Allan V. Horwitz
  Professor of Sociology
  Rutgers University

• Kathryn McVicar
  Assistant Professor of Neurology and Pediantrics
  Albert Einstein College of Medicine

• Harold W. Neighbors
  Professor of Health Behavior & Health Education
  University of Michigan

• Bernice Pescosolido
  Professor of Sociology
  Indiana University

• Andrew Sperling
  Director Federal Legislative Advocacy
  The National Alliance on Mental Illness (D.C.)

• Shankar Vendantam
  Staff Writer covering mental health
  The Washington Post

• Otto Wahl
  Professor of Psychology
  University of Hartford (CT)