Educational Media Reviews Online

Adults ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, both men and women, talk about their experiences treating their mental illnesses with medications. There is no narration, just the words of the patients themselves describing their physical and emotional symptoms and responses to medications. They briefly describe how the pharmaceuticals help their symptoms, the range of side effects, the value of taking meds, why they might stop medicating, and other things that help them cope, such as exercise, the support of family and friends, and talking to people about their illnesses. While this film is well done technically, it doesn’t go deep enough into specific illnesses or specific medications to be of tremendous educational value except at an introductory level. It is effective to hear directly from those suffering from an illness how they are coping—one can infer quite a bit from body language, voice inflection and facial indicators. That is Meds strong point. The lack of depth keeps it from getting a higher recommendation, and it is recommended with reservations for library collections supporting patient education collections and possibly introductory health and social work programs.