Black Lives Matter co-founder shares family's struggles with mental illness in film "Bedlam"

Patrisse Cullors’s older brother, Monte, was 23 when he was released from prison after serving a four-year sentence. After his release, he was babbling and unable to sleep for days before Cullors and her mother had him hospitalized. It was as if she was “literally watching someone deteriorate,” she says. “That was my introduction to my brother's mental illness.” Thus began years of trial and error as their family tried to seek treatment for Monte. Cullors, who co-founded the Black Lives Matter movement, worked with director and addiction psychiatrist Ken Rosenberg on “Bedlam," a film that exposes the effects of the United States's declining mental healthcare system created by decades of severe underfunding. Working on the film showed her a side of the current mental health crisis that she and many other families in America face daily. "We've really left it to family members to have to be the caregivers when we're not trained to do so. … We need more resources. We need more support," she says. The movie will air on PBS's "Independent Lens" in April.

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