A Crazy Thought

Cottonwood, California | Series

Documentary

Jamie Weil

1 Campaigns | California, United States

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This campaign raised $30,150 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.

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We are losing our kids to mental illness, a treatable biological illness. What look like societal problems of crime, homelessness, and suicide are often traced back to a failed attempt by our communities to help our children manage these brain illnesses and thrive. We MUST do better now, but how?

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Mission Statement

As a parent and teacher, I have experienced the responsibility of navigating youth mental health first hand. Mental illness does not discriminate. A person of any race, gender, sexual orientation, age, or religion is vulnerable. We are about inclusivity, and are a female-helmed project.

The Story

Exclusive First Look At Our Official Trailer, for A Crazy Thought

If you know me at all, you know my world changed when my oldest child started showing signs he was in great pain during elementary school, the same school in Manhattan Beach where I was teaching second grade. We drove to school together every day, but somehow he was able to hide just how much pain he was experiencing and I missed it. I still don’t understand how, exactly, except that I was quite distracted and overwhelmed by all the responsibilities I felt at the time.

Eventually the walls gave way, and a tsunami of symptoms flooded our world. It was in that riptide I made a choice: I would do all that I could to encourage all other parents, and especially single parents, going through this journey that there is hope and that they are not alone. I would attempt to let any young person I intuited was struggling know how important and unique they were. I would learn to lean into others who had gone before me and advocate fiercely for my child, not hide in a dark closet where no one could see me, no matter what.

I knew that if no one could see me, nobody could help us. We needed to live out loud, both so we could help ourselves and others. Both are deeply connected. I would dive deep into my creative self during my time on this planet to find a new conversation that was different than the one I was being told. It wasn’t to Pollyanna the Truth. God knows, the teen years were a challenge and we wrote about that in detail in our side-by-side accounting of that gut-wrenching time in Voices of Bipolar Disorder. The story I was being told then was you really need to adjust your expectations. Recovery isn’t really a thing. There’s really nothing you can do for your child.

Nothing we could do? Just so you know, that’s a bold-faced lie. And it’s not helpful. It discourages both parents and young people who are facing a mental health hurdle that they are likely not going to be able to jump over it. People blame the system (which admittedly is like the monster in the upside down in Stranger Things–except for less connected), they see the lack (of doctors, of support, of psych ERS, of money, of allies, of etc. etc. etc.)…and, yes, all those things are true. Nearly every California sheriff will tell you his prison is a psych facility. Twin Towers, in Downtown Los Angeles, is the largest mental health facility in the country at last check, with one tower being solely dedicated to yellow shirts, the ones they give out when they determine an inmate has a brain illness. What looks like societal issues of suicide, crime, and homelessness are really a result of our paralysis as a society to talk openly and honestly about mental health. Only until we learn to do this, to treat brain illness like the biological illness it is and not like some shameful stigma, will we be able to significantly shift the landscape of brain illness in a meaningful way.

My vision for this project came in the form of a calling just before attending a retreat last year at the Esalen Institute. The calling was to start a new conversation around youth mental health to give people hope, inspiration, and resources, all in one easy-to-navigate place. The calling was to empower people with the exciting hope and help that's out there so that the next generation is not facing the epidemic we are facing now. The calling was to do this from an everyday parent and teacher's viewpoint in a straightforward and encouraging, rather than that of a faceless organization with overwhelming amounts of data to wade through.

A Crazy Thought, the docuseries, will do just that. Beyond the docuseries, a portal of resources to help parents, teachers, and young people will be created. This free portal will help those who choose to step in easily see their next steps after first signs of brain illness and be able to move on that quickly. This portal will not lose sight of the humanity of this experience, but rather will always keep that in the fore. The vision is to take this series to schools at all levels for both teacher in-service and University speaker series.

I have a dream that nobody will weather this storm alone again.

We began production Fall of 2017 with an overall budget of $300,000. For the purposes of this crowdfunding campaign, there are interviews throughout California that we need to do quickly as young people are having experiences and exciting solutions that need to be shared. Now. Yesterday. Even during this campaign, we must capture exciting ideas as they happen in real time. Many have been pre-interviewed, are ready to go, and the 30,000 will help us get those interviews done this year and create a pilot episode. We then plan to enlist sponsors, philanthropic donors with aligned values, and vet grant options. This needs to happen quickly so we stop losing lives to this epidemic.

The cost of accomplishing this is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost we face as a society for continuing on status quo. Our mission is to make a movement and be agents of change for the sake of our children and for our world.