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Madness at the movies: prioritised movies for self-directed learning by medical students Nick Wilson, Deb Heath, Tim Heath, Peter Gallagher and Mark Huthwaite Australas Psychiatry published online 17 August 2014 DOI: 10.1177/1039856214545550 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apy.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/16/1039856214545550
Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
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>> OnlineFirst Version of Record - Aug 17, 2014 What is This?
Downloaded from apy.sagepub.com at University of Newcastle on August 22, 2014
545550 research-article2014
APY0010.1177/1039856214545550Australasian Psychiatry 0(0)Wilson et al.
Australasian
Psychiatry
Culture
Madness at the movies: prioritised movies for self-directed learning by medical students
Australasian Psychiatry –4 1 © The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1039856214545550 apy.sagepub.com
Nick Wilson University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand Deb Heath Starship Hospital, Auckland District Health Board, Auckland, New Zealand Tim Heath Auckland, New Zealand Peter Gallagher University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand Mark Huthwaite University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract Objective: We aimed to systematically compile a list of 10 movies to facilitate self-directed learning in psychiatry by medical students. Method: The selected areas were those of the top five mental health conditions from the Global Burden of Disease 2010 study. The search strategy for movies covered an extensive range of sources (published literature and websites), followed by closer examination and critical viewing of a sample. Results: Out of a total of 503 potential movies that were identified, 23 were selected for viewing and more detailed critique. The final top 10 were: for depressive and anxiety disorders: Ordinary People (1980), Silver Linings Playbook (2012); for illicit drug use: Trainspotting (1996), Winter’s Bone (2010), Rachel Getting Married (2008), Half Nelson (2006); for alcohol use disorders: Another Year (2010), Passion Fish (1992); and for schizophrenia: The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006), and An Angel at My Table (1990). Conclusions: The final selection of 10 movies all appeared to have relatively high entertainment value together with rich content in terms of psychiatric themes. Further research could evaluate the extent to which medical students actually watch such movies, by assessing the level of withdrawals from a medical school library and surveying student responses. Keywords: psychiatry, movies, films, self-directed learning, cinema
M
ovies can be used for self-directed learning by medical students as reported for those movies with public health themes (when freely available in DVD format from a medical school library).1–4 This approach allows for learning outside routine working week hours and so does not add to the crowded teaching curriculum. We therefore aimed to systematically select a set of movies for self-directed learning by medical students in psychiatry. There is quite an international literature on the use of movies for teaching psychiatry, but no systematic process has been used to select a list of movies that might be optimal from both educational and entertainment value perspectives. Therefore we aimed to create a ‘top 10’ list of movies that cover aspects of major mental health conditions, and which are also potentially both educational and entertaining.
Methods A first step was to identify the most important topic areas in mental health, and this was done by examining the results of the Global Burden Diseases Study (2010).5 This work indicates these to be as follows: depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, illicit drug use disorders, alcohol use disorders and schizophrenia (when considered by disability-adjusted life-years and ordered by declining health burden).
Corresponding author: Nick Wilson, University of Otago, Wellington, PO Box 7343, New Zealand. Email: [email protected]
1 Downloaded from apy.sagepub.com at University of Newcastle on August 22, 2014
Australasian Psychiatry
The next step was to identify prospective movies from the following sources: •• Searches of Medline in August 2013 using key psychiatric terms (as per the above categories) and the terms: ‘movie’/‘cinema’/‘film’ (i.e. 12 articles identified). •• A book on the subject published in 2003.6 •• A New York University (NYU) database on the arts and medicine,7 which included movies with educational value on the topic areas of: alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, mental illness and suicide. •• Three Wikipedia sites that listed movies relating to mental health: ‘mental illness in film’, ‘list of films featuring mental disorders’ and ‘films about alcoholism’. From the compiled list, the next step was to select those movies with the highest artistic and entertainment value based on movie critic reviews on the popular ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ (RT) website (mainly comprised of newspaper reviewers of movies). We only selected those movies with an aggregated grading score from the RT movie reviewers of ≥7.5/10. We also restricted the selection to movies that were released from 1960 onwards and which were available in English language or had English language subtitles. The next stage of the selection involved examining descriptions of the movie content (e.g. any relevant Wikipedia sites, the NYU site and the RT site) to better ascertain the topics covered (i.e. to see if it covered one of the major topic areas in mental health as detailed above).
A selection of these were then viewed by the authors, and collectively ranked in order (best to worst) by all the authors in terms of potential for medical student learning about psychiatry. Final rankings by the authors followed email discussions on each of the movies’ strengths and weaknesses for medical education. All the rankings were considered collectively to determine the highest top 10 movies (albeit a requirement of at least two movies in each category of major mental health condition). Although the review team had different backgrounds we did not attempt to weight the rankings in any way (i.e. two were practising psychiatrists, two were university-based academics with experience in using movies for medical education, and one was a retired teacher with an interest in movies).
Results From the various sources examined, we identified a total of 503 movies (the full list available in an Online Report (http://www.otago.ac.nz/wellington/otago072475.pdf). Of these, exclusions were for being too old (pre-1960, n=50, 9.9%), having no reviews on the RT website (n=94, 18.7%), having too low a score on RT reviewer gradings (i.e.
Madness at the movies: prioritised movies for self-directed learning by medical students Nick Wilson, Deb Heath, Tim Heath, Peter Gallagher and Mark Huthwaite Australas Psychiatry published online 17 August 2014 DOI: 10.1177/1039856214545550 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apy.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/16/1039856214545550
Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
Additional services and information for Australasian Psychiatry can be found at: Email Alerts: http://apy.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://apy.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
>> OnlineFirst Version of Record - Aug 17, 2014 What is This?
Downloaded from apy.sagepub.com at University of Newcastle on August 22, 2014
545550 research-article2014
APY0010.1177/1039856214545550Australasian Psychiatry 0(0)Wilson et al.
Australasian
Psychiatry
Culture
Madness at the movies: prioritised movies for self-directed learning by medical students
Australasian Psychiatry –4 1 © The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1039856214545550 apy.sagepub.com
Nick Wilson University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand Deb Heath Starship Hospital, Auckland District Health Board, Auckland, New Zealand Tim Heath Auckland, New Zealand Peter Gallagher University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand Mark Huthwaite University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract Objective: We aimed to systematically compile a list of 10 movies to facilitate self-directed learning in psychiatry by medical students. Method: The selected areas were those of the top five mental health conditions from the Global Burden of Disease 2010 study. The search strategy for movies covered an extensive range of sources (published literature and websites), followed by closer examination and critical viewing of a sample. Results: Out of a total of 503 potential movies that were identified, 23 were selected for viewing and more detailed critique. The final top 10 were: for depressive and anxiety disorders: Ordinary People (1980), Silver Linings Playbook (2012); for illicit drug use: Trainspotting (1996), Winter’s Bone (2010), Rachel Getting Married (2008), Half Nelson (2006); for alcohol use disorders: Another Year (2010), Passion Fish (1992); and for schizophrenia: The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006), and An Angel at My Table (1990). Conclusions: The final selection of 10 movies all appeared to have relatively high entertainment value together with rich content in terms of psychiatric themes. Further research could evaluate the extent to which medical students actually watch such movies, by assessing the level of withdrawals from a medical school library and surveying student responses. Keywords: psychiatry, movies, films, self-directed learning, cinema
M
ovies can be used for self-directed learning by medical students as reported for those movies with public health themes (when freely available in DVD format from a medical school library).1–4 This approach allows for learning outside routine working week hours and so does not add to the crowded teaching curriculum. We therefore aimed to systematically select a set of movies for self-directed learning by medical students in psychiatry. There is quite an international literature on the use of movies for teaching psychiatry, but no systematic process has been used to select a list of movies that might be optimal from both educational and entertainment value perspectives. Therefore we aimed to create a ‘top 10’ list of movies that cover aspects of major mental health conditions, and which are also potentially both educational and entertaining.
Methods A first step was to identify the most important topic areas in mental health, and this was done by examining the results of the Global Burden Diseases Study (2010).5 This work indicates these to be as follows: depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, illicit drug use disorders, alcohol use disorders and schizophrenia (when considered by disability-adjusted life-years and ordered by declining health burden).
Corresponding author: Nick Wilson, University of Otago, Wellington, PO Box 7343, New Zealand. Email: [email protected]
1 Downloaded from apy.sagepub.com at University of Newcastle on August 22, 2014
Australasian Psychiatry
The next step was to identify prospective movies from the following sources: •• Searches of Medline in August 2013 using key psychiatric terms (as per the above categories) and the terms: ‘movie’/‘cinema’/‘film’ (i.e. 12 articles identified). •• A book on the subject published in 2003.6 •• A New York University (NYU) database on the arts and medicine,7 which included movies with educational value on the topic areas of: alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, mental illness and suicide. •• Three Wikipedia sites that listed movies relating to mental health: ‘mental illness in film’, ‘list of films featuring mental disorders’ and ‘films about alcoholism’. From the compiled list, the next step was to select those movies with the highest artistic and entertainment value based on movie critic reviews on the popular ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ (RT) website (mainly comprised of newspaper reviewers of movies). We only selected those movies with an aggregated grading score from the RT movie reviewers of ≥7.5/10. We also restricted the selection to movies that were released from 1960 onwards and which were available in English language or had English language subtitles. The next stage of the selection involved examining descriptions of the movie content (e.g. any relevant Wikipedia sites, the NYU site and the RT site) to better ascertain the topics covered (i.e. to see if it covered one of the major topic areas in mental health as detailed above).
A selection of these were then viewed by the authors, and collectively ranked in order (best to worst) by all the authors in terms of potential for medical student learning about psychiatry. Final rankings by the authors followed email discussions on each of the movies’ strengths and weaknesses for medical education. All the rankings were considered collectively to determine the highest top 10 movies (albeit a requirement of at least two movies in each category of major mental health condition). Although the review team had different backgrounds we did not attempt to weight the rankings in any way (i.e. two were practising psychiatrists, two were university-based academics with experience in using movies for medical education, and one was a retired teacher with an interest in movies).
Results From the various sources examined, we identified a total of 503 movies (the full list available in an Online Report (http://www.otago.ac.nz/wellington/otago072475.pdf). Of these, exclusions were for being too old (pre-1960, n=50, 9.9%), having no reviews on the RT website (n=94, 18.7%), having too low a score on RT reviewer gradings (i.e.
