An interview with Emmy award-winning television writer and executive producer, Chris Nee about her show, Doc McStuffins.  Chris wrote the show in order to help her own son Theo who suffers from severe asthma.  Chris tells the story of watching her child struggle to breathe, and how she decided to use the skill set she has as a TV writer to help him.  She describes the way that Doc, the 6 year old girl in the series, diagnoses and treats her stuffed animals who suffer from a wide variety of toy ailments.  The show uses upbeat music, the comforting of various stuffed animals and the realistic expression of children’s fears to show kids how frightening experiences can be made safe and hopeful. 

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An interview with film-maker Nancy Andrews about her experience as a patient in the surgical ICU. Nancy describes the ICU as a torture chamber, where if you didn’t know they were saving your life, you’d think they were trying to kill you.   She describes becoming delirious under the influence of painkillers and sedatives, and gives a vivid description of the hallucinations and fears that followed.  Upon her release from the hospital Nancy noticed that she kept having “weird experiences”as if she was back there,” which her doctor fortunately recognized as flashbacks from PTSD.   Nancy’s film, On a Phantom Limb, explores the horror and disorientation of being an ICU patient.  She says that while she is “unable to bear watching scenes of surgery or the physical restraint of others, making a film about it was empowering because I was in full control of the film, in ways that I was out of control as a patient.”  She is passionate about getting the message out that PTSD after the ICU is common, and that early identification and treatment can make a tremendous difference.

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An interview with psychiatrist, Dr. Jim Gilligan, former mental health director for the prison system in Massachusetts, and the author of three books on violence.   Dr. Gilligan reports that many of his patients told him that they had committed murder and other acts of violence because they felt disrespected.  He reports that for these men, feeling treated as if they were one down, weak or inferior was intolerable, and that violence was their only means of reclaiming pride or self-esteem.  He also observes that punishment tends to generate violence, both in parenting and in our penal system.  Punishment relieves people of  the guilt (that inhibits violence), but increases their shame, which fuels violent acting out.  Under his tenure, the only prison program that successfully reduced recidivism to zero,  was offering course toward a college degree. In those men who completed the program, they now had non-violent means of reclaiming their self-esteem, and feeling less ashamed.

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An interview with playwright, Cathy Plourde, founder of Add Verb productions about her new play, Major Medical Breakthrough.  Cathy tells the story of writing a play to inspire health care providers to screen their patients for domestic violence.  She gave sobering statistics about the high numbers of women and some men, who are being abused who see their doctors during the abuse and are never asked about it.  Indeed only 10-19% of doctors report that they screen their patients routinely for domestic violence. Cathy stressed that where there is domestic violence, there is also likely to be sexual assault, something that often goes unasked about.  She cites the ACE study to show that the more trauma in a person’s life, the more physical health problems they will have, and unless our doctors and nurses ask their patients, the cause of many illnesses will be missed.  She gave a thoughtful description of why providers are hesitant to ask, but encouraged health workers to trust that asking the question, providing support and access to resources can make a tremendous difference.

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This is part two of an interview with violence prevention educator, Daryl Fort, about ways in which we are all bystanders to social interactions that foster violence against women. Daryl challenges us to see these situations for what they are and to have the courage to intervene.  He describes two everyday social situations in which it feels very risky to speak up and challenge what is going on; one in which guys are debriefing their sexual conquests together, and one in which a man is trying to get a woman drunk at a bar so he can have sex with her.  He acknowledges how difficult it is for such verbal challenges to go well, and suggests that we make a clear decision ahead of time to act when someone is at risk.

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Part one of an interview with violence prevention educator, Daryl Fort,  about how the culture supports the superiority of men and the inferiority of women.   He links the many levels of messages about women’s inferiority to the justification of mistreatment.  He describes two gang rapes of young girls in which communities colluded to protect the rapists and to focus the conversation on the behavior, and dress of the victims.  He describes the way that cultural assumptions that women are not to be taken seriously, result in minimization of the crimes against them.  He makes a clear case that jokes and disrespectful language form the foundation and and basis for the eventual expression of violence against women. 

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An interview with Maine’s governor, Paul LePage about his childhood growing up in a home with domestic violence.  Governor LePage describes the moment when he decided he had to leave home; the moment when his father tried to pay him to lie to a doctor about the cause of his injuries.  He describes living with the fear that pervaded his childhood home, and his attempts to protect his mother from his father’s assaults.  LePage then goes on to challenge men to speak up against domestic violence in settings with other men, and to create a culture that has no tolerance for attitudes and behaviors that belittle women. He talks about his vision for new laws in Maine that protect women from batterers and bring abusers to justice.

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An interview with Drew Wing, executive director of Boys To Men, an organization devoted to reducing interpersonal violence by fostering the healthy development of boys.  Drew describes their Reducing Sexism and Violence Program (RSVP), working with teenagers to develop empathy for the experience of others, and to clarify their potential roles as bystanders who can intervene in situations of violent speech, attitudes or behavior. Drew describes the chilling story of Kitty Genovese’s murder that was witnessed by many who did nothing to help.  He describes the importance of doing something early and taking any action possible to help de-escalate a violent situation.  He also described the ways that our current culture of masculinity, which emphasizes violence, sexual conquest, and slacker culture contributes to assumptions of superiority and entitlement among men.  RSVP aims to challenge this understanding of masculinity and its representation in the media in order for both men and women to feel safer to be themselves.

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An interview with Lundy Bancroft, the former co-leader of Emerge, the first batterers treatment program in the United States.  He is the Author of, Why Does He Do That: inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.  Lundy debunks common myths about abusers, explaining that the man does not have an anger problem, or a problem with conflict resolution. He explains that violence happens in a larger context of control, in which the man attempts to control who she sees, what she does, what she wears, how she parents, etc.  He explains that abuse is deliberate and based on the man’s thinking that he is superior, and entitled and justified in treating her this way.  He describes the need for prevention by changing the culture which fosters the feeling of entitlement among boys.  He decries the idea that “boys will be boys, “  which turns a blind eye to the attitudes that foster domestic violence.  He describes some of the necessary steps in taking responsibility for abuse that a man needs to go through in order for treatment of batterers to be successful.

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An interview with Julia Colpitts, the Executive Director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence.  Julia affirms that Maine has reached a tipping point, where the recent murders of wives by their husbands has made it clear to everyone that change needs to happen.  We discussed the current legislation that is pending in Maine to prevent offenders from being let out on bail without a criminal background check, that includes strangulation as a prosecutable offense, and that mandates a risk assessment to identify those abusers most at risk for lethal violence.  Julia reports the ways that the mental health community has not always served victims well, by failing to do risk assessments, or by referring to couples therapy which can put the woman more at risk for violence.  Julia describes the importance of engaging men to speak out clearly and powerfully about the necessity of treating women with love and respect.

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