Mad Pride Comes to Fargo-Moorhead

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. A free educational film festival and speaking event will be held at the Fargo Theatre.

The 1 in 4 Film Festival is named for the one of four adults who will suffer from a diagnosable mental illness within a given year. There will be documentary-style video presentations throughout the day, live skits at 5 p.m., speakers who themselves suffer from a mental illness at 6 p.m., a discussion panel, and a full length feature film, Jupiter’s Wife, at 7:30. Educational and source materials will be available throughout the day.

The festival is organized and presented by the Social Connextion of Moorhead, an organization with nearly five hundred members who suffer from severe and persistent mental illness.

People with mental illness are often isolated from the community, and the Social Connextion was created as a sort of safe zone, a place of compassion and understanding, simply because everyone there has suffered the effects of mental illness personally.

Sometimes a mental illness can produce behaviors that appear scary or uncomfortable. If someone on the street were speaking loudly and nonsensically, most observers would avoid contact with that person and a remark might be made that the the person was “crazy.” The illness distances the sufferer from society, and worse, can estrange him or her from family and friends.

Our society oftentimes wants to ignore the problem, hoping someone else will solve it.

But no. I am here to say that this is a community problem, and thus requires a community solution.

Would any one of us disclose to an employer that we suffered from a mental illness, or, for that matter, from any disability that wasn’t obvious? To ask it is to answer it.

Persons with disabilities are discriminated against frequently in our community. I have witnessed it and I have experienced it myself. We need to open our eyes: we do not value the disabled in our country as we should. We allow the mentally ill to freeze to death on the streets of Fargo-Moorhead every year and most of us just shrug it off as “a worthless bum.”

The lack of compassion for the less fortunate is what disturbs me the most. We are better than this as a nation. Someone, lots of someones, have to come forward and say “enough.” We need to get over our fears and realize that mental illness occurs because of brain injury, chemical imbalance, abuse, trauma, genetics, etc. It does not happen because someone is weak or lazy, or because of a lesser moral character. Mental illness is a physiological brain disorder.

It is no wonder that we fear people with mental illness. It seems the only media portrayals of the mentally ill involve violence. But most persons with mental illness are not violent at all.

A generation ago, people were afraid of those with cancer, fearing it was contagious. Now, abandoning someone with cancer is considered cruelty.

A big part of the solution does not affect our wallets. Compassion, kindness, and just taking the time to listen to someone who is struggling—these things cost nothing, yet to someone who is suffering, they can be priceless.

If You Go

What: 1 in 4 Film Festival
Where: Fargo Theatre
When: Wed., May 28, 10am-9pm
How Much: Free of charge
Who: All ages welcome
Info: (218) 284-6069