18 Films That Explore Mental Illness

Movies

After spending eight months in a mental institution, a former teacher moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife.

Movies

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

Movies

A journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect.

Movies

While serving time for insanity at a state mental hospital, implacable rabble-rouser, Randle Patrick McMurphy, inspires his fellow patients to rebel against the authoritarian rule of head nurse, Mildred Ratched.

Movies

Scott has been a case of arrested development ever since his firefighter father died when he was seven. He's now reached his mid-20s having achieved little, chasing a dream of becoming a tattoo artist that seems far out of reach. As his ambitious younger sister heads off to college, Scott is still living with his exhausted ER nurse mother and spends his days smoking weed, hanging with the guys — Oscar, Igor and Richie — and secretly hooking up with his childhood friend Kelsey. But when his mother starts dating a loudmouth firefighter named Ray, it sets off a chain of events that will force Scott to grapple with his grief and take his first tentative steps toward moving forward in life.