A Place to Breathe Again: Supporting Mental Health for Patients and Their Families With MediCinema
When exam stress triggered OCD behaviours and anorexia for one young girl, she became incredibly unwell and was admitted to hospital. Here, her Mum explains how visiting the MediCinema helped to bring the family close once again, providing the chance to reconnect and find hope in their situation. The family wish to remain anonymous.
In our close-knit family of four, cinema has always held a special place. It’s where we’ve shared countless laughs and escaped into different worlds together. However, when my 15-year-old autistic daughter began to withdraw from (family) life, and rapidly lost a worrying amount of weight, this bright, loving girl we knew, seemed to disappear, and with her went the feeling of being a family unit.
I work in the medical field and was frustrated and heartbroken by my inability to see the warning signs, as my daughter self-isolated and became anorexic when she was studying for her GCSE’s. I later discovered that she had stopped eating to do OCD behaviours triggered by exam stress. By May this year she admitted to hospital having become dangerously unwell. The next 10 days were a blur of worry and stress.
What I found so difficult, about this time, was that we couldn’t be together as a family. My husband was working by day, and our son, who is normally very close to his sister, found it distressing to visit her in hospital. It felt like my family was falling apart, separated by hospital walls and the gathering speed of her illness.
The timing of the invite to the cinema was so critical, as the day before had literally been the worst day of my life. I was starting to worry that we might never, ever get the gentle, kind girl we knew back. I had previously heard of MediCinema, I’ve even donated before and always thought “what a nice way for hospital patients to pass the time”, however I never could have imagined how life-changing the experience of visiting would be.
The moment I walked in, I could have cried. For the first time in a long time I could breathe again, all four of us were sat together, the glow of the screen washing away the stress and fear. We were simply a family watching a film, imagining that life was back to normal, and that everything would be ok, maybe not now, but hopefully sometime in the future.
Patient's Mum - Anon
The film we saw was the live action version of “How to Train Your Dragon”. The familiarity and comfort of seeing a story my daughter loves and her being able to recognise locations we’ve visited on family holidays, brought a small smile to her lips, and a light in her eyes, that I hadn’t seen in weeks. Seeing this film, with her family surrounding her, had started to unlock something in my daughter. She was beginning to enjoy herself again. What I felt in this moment was more powerful than anything, it was hope.
The MediCinema staff could not have been nicer, they were so kind and considerate of her autism, offering to turn the lights up, lower the volume and passing out fidget toys. The screening wasn’t too busy, and the cleanliness of the cinema, helped my daughter, who had been anxious about visiting public places, feel less exposed and more comfortable. It felt like a safe space. The amount of care and love that went into that screening was so apparent, I cannot thank you all enough.
The effects of that MediCinema visit were long lasting. In the months that followed, we were able to visit a local independent cinema as a family. Before visiting MediCinema, this would have been unthinkable. The tiny bit of my daughter that re-emerged in that dark room, gave us all the strength to continue. It gave her something to fight for—a desire to get well, get home and rediscover her love of film.
Genuinely I felt that our visit to the MediCinema sort of saved us and pulled our family back together at one of the most distressing times of our lives.
For anyone considering supporting this charity, I would tell them this: MediCinema isn’t just a place to watch movies. It’s a place where families can heal and find respite from the impossible.
