Mental Health Documentaries

Masks of Madness: Science of Healing (50 min.)

Hosted by actress Margot Kidder, who suffered from bipolar disorder, the documentary chronicles the experiences of patients and doctors who went beyond conventional psychiatry to find answers in orthomolecular medicine. Margot and other patients discuss their mental illness, their difficulties in getting answers and their final recoveries using diet, vitamins and a minimum of pharmacological intervention. Doctors including Abram Hoffer, Hugh Riordan, and Hyla Cass, describe their therapeutic methods, and their professional satisfaction at seeing patients recover from the “incurable”.

Feed Your Head (45 min.)

A documentary about the life and work of Dr. Abram Hoffer, Feed Your Head won the Founder’s award “for an outstanding production exemplifying historical Canadian characters or events” at the Yorkton Film Festival in Saskatchewan. Shot across Canada from 2006 to 2009, the film tells the story of Dr. Hoffer and Humphry Osmond, who met in 1951 and embarked on a quest to find what psychiatry said didn’t exist: a cure for schizophrenia. They showed that mental illness could be controlled with natural foods, a healthy lifestyle, and optimal doses of vitamins. Two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling defined the concept as ‘orthomolecular’ psychiatry. More than fifty years later, millions of patients have improved their mental health using these heretical ideas.