I consider the show Homeland to be amongst the best shows ever created for television. The acting in it is so real that I am thoroughly convinced that everyone really is either the CIA operative, family member or terrorist they are portraying. The characters are so compellingly portrayed and the multi-dimensional accuracies are so spot on that the life breathed into the script by this cast is too tremendous to originate from actors playing roles.
Seeing Carrie locked away in the psychiatric hospital and given Lithium against her will pained me. I feel so terribly for her that she is being bullied by a system that gives doctors so much power. She must conform to the societal system in place or lose her freedom to move freely through the world. I resented the doctors who donned Draconian white coats and analyzed her in a way that stacks the odds against her. For example, she has an organic brain disease that medical professionals call Bipolar. She must take lithium daily in order to share the system’s prescribed reality. She must act a certain way, think a certain way, and behave according to society’s measurable standards. Any variance on her part that is seen as oppositionary to those in power is met with restrictions to personal liberties and freedoms.
Carrie has become the scapegoat of the CIA and she finds herself marginalized by powerful doctors whose opinions are enforced by the courts and law enforcing agencies. This happens in real life more than people acknowledge or admit. Getting labeled with a medical diagnosis for a psychological disorder can be a high price to pay. On one hand, those with labels can receive treatment and potentially recover or improve. On the other hand, those in power can wield that diagnostic label over the “patient” in certain situations. Carrie is seen as broken, less than, and sick. Why is that? How can one person or a group of similar people (doctors) get to impose their judgment on others—especially when their help is not wanted and their assessment of the “patient” involves such soft science? That is, someone observing Carrie harshly can find her actions to be paranoid and delusional while someone else may see her as brilliant, feisty and heroic.
I detest seeing how Carrie must cow-toe and suffer crippling blows to her self-esteem as she navigates through the rules and regulations of the system. Her rights are being very violated by her former boss, the CIA and the doctors holding her in the hospital. Ironically, the more the hospital insists she needs to “act normal” the worse she feels psychologically and the more she is losing touch with the common reality most people share. She is not being given any respect for the unique person she is and all her efforts are unappreciated or vilified. This is mental health care at its worst.
