CPH:DOX 2024: The Recovery Channel | Interview of Ellen Ugelstad

The Recovery Channel is seemingly a movie about itself. Ellen Ugelstad created a fictional broadcast network to pose questions about modern-day psychiatric practices after having witnessed her brother be placed in and out of institutions for years. The primary issue she chose to tackle is coercion, which is when patients are admitted to treatment institutions against their will, normally with the consent of a family member.

This network—The Recovery Channel—is the subject of the documentary, and it weaves a broadcast featuring interviews of victims or family members of psychiatric coercion with recreated scenes of patients under psychiatric treatment. All the actors have ties to psychiatric practice—some are real doctors or nurses, others have personal experience with loved ones.

Also included are real-life clips of Ugelstad and her crew asking themselves questions about how to best represent their issues and whether making a movie in this format is the right way to do it at all. The documentary shines a much-needed light on the dehumanizing nature of psychiatric treatment institutions, and poses questions about where human rights come into play for people with psychosis. However, like with most difficult subjects, there are no easy approaches.

Ryan Yau: What is your background with the field of psychiatry?

Ellen Ugelstad: I have a younger brother who had his first psychosis when he was 17, and was admitted to the hospital. I was 19 and had never heard the word psychosis before, so it was new to me even though my parents were working in healthcare. My father is a psychiatrist and my mother is a social worker, so I have experience from many perspectives.

Ryan Yau: Is coercion in psychiatry an issue that isn’t being talked about enough?

Ellen Ugelstad: Definitely. We need to discuss it in the public, not only in those areas that work with it or experience it, because then the conversation becomes very marginalized in those groups. I want the public to know what’s going on behind doors and to discuss, “Isn’t there another way to do this? Aren’t we in a different time that needs different methods of dealing with people?”

Ryan Yau: Why was a hybrid documentary format the best way to approach this issue? Why not a narrative film, for example?

Ellen Ugelstad: I wanted to create authenticity. You can do that both in documentary and fiction, but I wanted to show some themes or situations that wouldn’t be ethically right to do in documentary form. The belt scene, for example: the workers in the scene are doing their jobs but the woman experiencing the belt is an actor, because I wouldn’t be able to get that in real life. I really wanted people to see what it’s like, and sometimes this is a violation—like you’re going into somebody’s boundaries.

Ryan Yau: When did the idea of creating a TV channel come about?

Ellen Ugelstad: It was important for me that I didn’t do a traditional documentary because it’s a very complex topic—I wanted to find an artistic way to do it so I can communicate all this. I thought of the TV channel as a stage to tell stories from, and it can also be a commentary on how the media often stigmatizes people with mental illness. Most people are not dangerous, they’re not going to kill you, they’re just very afraid and having a hard time. The media is very seldom nuanced, and they jump very quickly into different topics. So I thought, what about a TV channel that goes and dwells into one topic?

Ryan Yau: You also mentioned that all of the actors have had some sort of experience with psychiatric institutions.

Ellen Ugelstad: We had this dogma that everybody in the film has some sort of lived experience in connection to psychiatry—it can be as patient, as family, as lawyer, as personnel working in the field. Our main news anchor is an actress but she’s also a nurse, and she used to be a journalist working in the media.

Ryan Yau: One thing I found interesting was a scene where the employees of the fake broadcast company, including yourself, are talking about how to best address the issue of coercion. Why did you include the creation of the film in the film itself?

Ellen Ugelstad: I wanted to deconstruct the construction of the film, like my personal background for doing this. I also wanted to tell the audience, this is the way we do it, but please come in and join us anyway. I think it’s just an honest and fair way of showing my intentions and agenda with the film.

Ryan Yau: Is there anything you’d want to say to audiences who maybe aren’t so familiar with coercion as an issue?

Ellen Ugelstad: Sometimes there are more traumas inside the psychiatric system than outside. And I don’t think we as a society should treat people like that, right? I hope that the healthcare systems all over the world also implement methods that have already worked, like open dialogue, open doors, safe wards, etc. Because all research shows that when you do things to reduce coercion, it works.