At the time of writing this, the GMA website, which usually posts follow-ups, has nothing on their site, which I found a little strange. The mother also appeared not with another member of her family, but a lawyer, who was also a family friend. I wondered how these unusual, but small anomalies reflected on modern society’s schizoid views on drugs. I certainly do not approve of “drugs”, the term which brings to mind things like cocaine, methamphetamine, or marijuana. It should also however bring to mind things like coffee, chocolate, and aspirin. Marijuana is a Schedule I drug in the U.S., which, according to definition, means it has no medical use. This is interesting since there has recently been quite an effort to promote so-called medical marijuana. So really our question should be what is a medicine?

In theory a reasonable definition might have medicine as being some sort of foreign substance that effects treatment of disease. Autism is certainly a disease, but is there any evidence that marijuana can “cure” autism? Without doing any research, we should already be skeptical that the answer could possibly be yes.

For one thing, autism is really a spectrum disorder. That means that there may be many causes, both genetic and environmental that produce the constellation of symptoms we call autism. If a doctor were treating you for cancer, he would first have to know whether it was brain cancer or skin cancer to choose a proper treatment. There are certainly anecdotal sources like this GMA news story, but also other places on the Internet that will tell you that someone has cured their child with marijuana brownies, but do you really know that that child was diagnosed with autism? How can a parent know if the supposedly cured child has the same etiology (same cause of the disease) as their own child? Marijuana, or at least its active component, THC, certainly has a psychotropic affect, as it interacts with cannabinoid receptors in the brain. Can this mean that somewhere somehow marijuana can have some unrecognized benefits for autistic individuals? At this time, there simply is insufficient information to come to a conclusion.

You can certainly understand the desperation of any parent who wanted to get the best treatment possible for their child. While the American Pediatric Society continues to oppose medical marijuana, they are in favor of at further investigation into its applications as a drug. Until then, even so-called medical marijuana is still illegal under federal and most state laws. Hopefully however, if a clinical application for autism is found, stigmas about the idea of marijuana as a “drug,” will not hinder scientific debate and progress.

Titled ‘Screening Madness’, the report highlights lazy and derivational stereotypes that perpetuate the myth that people with mental health problems are either stupid or dangerous.

According to Dr Byrne, “Mental health stereotypes have not changed over a century of cinema. If anything, the comedy is crueller and the deranged psycho killer even more demonic.”

Heath Ledger’s Joker is a case in point. Dr. Byrne points out that the character’s violence and humor is based almost entirely on a misunderstanding of schizophrenia. At one point in the film, “Batman describes the Joker as a schizophrenic clown, and when the film’s second hero Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face and embraces evil, the familiar stereotype of schizophrenia is activated.”

“This is omnipresent in cinema misrepresentations – the psycho killer is immortal and sadistic, motivated by madness – in almost all psychosis films, that character will kill.”

The portrayal of mental illness in the media has been something we have focused on for a long time in G2C Online. In an interview with Dr. David Porteous a couple of years ago, he pointed out that there is a real dearth of knowledge about mental health and genetics among the general public, who have been let down by the failings of traditional media:

“All too often I find that when I’m reading articles in the media, genetic concepts used inappropriately and sometimes quite damagingly.”

While Dr. Porteous was referring primarily to the news media, we should have similar expectations of the movie industry, even when we are dealing with the domain of fiction.

This is underlined by a survey in Dr. Byrne’s report, which found that 44% of people believe that people with a mental illness tend to act violently. He points out that people may be arriving at these misperceptions because of what they see on the silver screen – 49% of those surveyed also reported seeing individuals with a mental illness acting violently in films. While we should not draw too many conclusions from a correlation, it is an interesting statistic to ponder.

We have come to expect a high level of professionalism from actors in major roles. Ledger’s preparations for the role of Joker, for example, are legendary. Had the film’s producers shown a similar commitment to understanding mental illness, then perhaps we could have had a more accurate script. Then again, according to moviemistakes.com, which has identified 60 other errors in the movie, this may be far too much to ask.