View the trailer below or click here to purchase the DVD.

Darkest Hours: The Crisis in Children’s Mental Healthcare is the result of three years of research and interviews by Christina DeFranco, featuring in-depth commentary and interviews with parents, teens, advocates, and health care providers who share their horror stories about the lack of a mental health care system in Connecticut.  The documentary demonstrates this desperate situation: from kids in crisis who’ve spent night after night in the emergency room because of the lack of psychiatric beds in the state, to the six-month waiting time to get an appointment with a psychologist, compounded by the frustration of dealing with managed care companies that continually deny coverage for necessary treatment.  It also shows the raw human emotion parents feel as they accept that their children are mentally ill and will likely face a lifetime of medication and therapy.

The film explores the challenges faced by five families who share intimate details of their struggle with mental illness.  From the gritty streets of Bristol to the affluent suburbs of Greenwich and Trumbull, Darkest Hours explains how parents’ anguish is the same.  DeFranco interviews a mother who has just lost her son to suicide in one of the state’s prisons, as well as a father who suffers a nervous breakdown after he is forced to send his son out of state for psychiatric treatment.  The kids talk about the frustration of taking pill after pill for years until they finally get the right medication, and the loneliness they feel when friends desert them.

DeFranco sits down with former Connecticut Lt. Governor Kevin Sullivan, whose mission is to overhaul the state’s mental health care system.  His message:  our jails, our nursing homes, and homeless shelters are all filled with the mentally ill, discarded by a society that refuses to deal with their illness until it is often too late.  He believes investing in policies that help the mentally ill when symptoms first arise will help them lead more productive lives and cost taxpayers less. Also heard from is the head of Connecticut’s Juvenile Justice Department, William Carbone, who explains it costs significantly less to treat a child with mental illness than it does to warehouse him in a detention center that costs approximately $100,000.00 per year.  Carbone estimates that nearly 65% of the kids in the state’s juvenile justice system have some form of mental illness — a statistic that mirrors the national numbers.

Documentary Production Team

Christina DeFranco spent three years researching and producing Darkest Hours, her first independent documentary.  Click here for her bio.  Darkest Hours was shot by Gregg Monte, a New England Emmy Award winner and 11-time nominee, who currently works for WTNH, Channel 8 in New Haven, CT.  Mark Ciesinski of TimeCode Editing, LLC provided editing, graphics and post-production work.  A New England Emmy Award winner, his editing and photography career spans more than 20 years.

Watch the documentary on snagfilms.com.