How far have we come?

I watched an excellent but emotionally disturbing film last night.

It was "Changeling"-- yet another of Clint Eastwood's thought -provoking directorial masterpieces.

Conspiracy, corruption and discrimination are some of the sociopolitical issues raised in the film, which is based on a series of events that took place in Los Angeles in the late 1920s .

"Changeling" exposes some alarming real-life examples of conspiring officials and corrupt police departments. But, to me, the most disturbing illustration was that of the L.A. County Hospital Psychiatric Ward.

It wasn't that I was distressed by the images of life inside an insane asylum. (I have seen "Girl Interrupted" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," after all.)

No...what I found most upsetting was the patients' sense of helplessness--and the doctors' refusal to listen to them.

The doctors and nurses assumed everything the women said or did to be evidence of their "insanity." The harder a patient tried to act normal, the crazier she seemed.

I was nauseated at the idea that, as soon as a woman is diagnosed as mentally ill, she essentially loses the ability to defend herself.

Fortunately, I know that over the past 80 years society has made significant progress in its approach to mental illness.

Today, doctors are better equipped to diagnose and treat anxiety, depression and mood disorders with counseling and medication; insurance companies are finally required to treat mental ailments the same way they treat physical ailments; and it seems the stigma attached to mental illness is gradually beginning to fade.

Taking all of this into consideration as I re-hashed the psych ward scenes in "Changeling," I convinced myself that patients in modern psychiatric wards are treated more humanely than those portrayed in the movie.

But this morning, NPR informed me that caretakers at a home for mentally retarded citizens were recently arrested for organizing after-hours "fight clubs" pitting disabled residents against each other.

So now I wonder...

If a group of caretakers can so easily abuse the mentally disabled, why should I think they couldn't do the same to the mentally ill?