Tim Krahn pads down the stairs in slippers. The footwear
contradicts the austere name of his workplace, Novel Tech Ethics, as
does the untucked shirt, stylishly cut hair and a welcoming, friendly
manner. (The only visible concession to formality is a few empty
earring holes in one ear.)
Novel Tech Ethics is an international and interdisciplinary research
group based at Dalhousie University and, through it, affiliated to the
QEII Health Sciences Centre. The group, where Krahn is a researcher,
explores the ethics of new technologies in the fields of neuroscience
and genetics.
Rather than heels of sturdy, sensible shoes echoing in long,
gleaming corridors of some cold, sterile building, Novel Tech is
located in an old house on LeMarchant.
The word itself, ethics, rings didactic, clinical—prescribing an
absolute right and wrong way to live. “We many times misconstrue that
ethics is about rules for right action,” Krahn says. “My job is to try
to get people to think critically about how to find an answer that is
for themselves but that is ethical at the same time.”
For the third year, Krahn has put on a free film series with panel
discussions on issues and ideas that illustrate the ethics of mental
illness and health care provision.
“Many of our formative views are birthed in the theatre,” Krahn
says.
States of Mind 2009 wraps up Wednesday with Charlie Bartlett,
starring Robert Downey Jr., Stephen Young and Anton Yelchin. The other
films were Michael Clayton, The Savages and Music
Within.
Mental health care providers, researchers, clinicians, advocates,
teachers, university faculty and students, parents and those Krahn
calls “mental health consumers” and their families have come to watch
the films. He reports between 150 to 200 people—capacity for the
theatre—attend.
“At least half our questions come from people who self-identify, or
are otherwise known to have, mental health conditions,” he says, though
offers no verification.
In Michael Clayton, a 2007 George Clooney-led thriller, Tom
Wilkinson plays a pivotal role: a senior partner at a major corporate
law firm who decides to go off his medication and, as Krahn says,
“gains what he thinks is the power of moral clarity,” threatening said
corporate clients’ standing.
While the film focuses on Clooney as the firm’s fixer, it offers to
Krahn an opportunity to discuss bipolar disorder—once termed manic
depression—as more than a condition of being mentally ill.
“This might not be just a pathology but a way of being,” he says.
If being mentally ill doesn’t bring with it enough stigma,
there’s self-doubt related to being on medication. “There’s a
long lineage whereby people think they’re compromising their autonomy
when they take medication,” Krahn says.
“These aren’t necessarily films I’d watch in my spare time,” he
admits. “But I have watched them many times and I do find them
meaningful for this purpose.” He seeks films with appeal to the
broadest viewers (he calls it a “neuro-diverse” world), among other
criteria, such as having some connection to the work of local
organizations.
With Charlie Bartlett, the series’ final film, “a parody of
psychiatry” runs through it. Such a portrayal of the profession (via
Stephen Young’s character) can affect the decision of a young person to
seek counselling or not, Krahn says. (Bartlett is in high school, an
age group he wants to reach.)
“One of the things I’m trying to do is to build a critical public
that can take it and say, ‘Yes, this can be something we can laugh
about, but we know this is not how all psychiatrists are.'” He hopes to
provide “a context where you can talk things through with professionals
in a way that isn’t charged.” (Krahn had Wade Junek, clinical and
consulting psychiatrist with the IWK Mental Health and Addictions
Program, preview the film. He will also sit on the panel.)
The films are not part of Krahn’s job at Novel Tech, nor is the
series funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which funds
the group. Krahn says he’s “no aficionado” of film, but recommends work
he wouldn’t show: Lodge Kerrigan, who wrote and directed Keane and Clean, Shaven. “I think I’d have an empty theatre in 10 or
20 minutes if I showed any of them. It’s like schizophrenia…from the
inside out.”
Charlie Bartlett, Wednesday, February 4
at QEII Royal Bank Theatre, 1796 Summer, 7pm, free.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2009.