Last week I watched the horror movie Housebound, and it was nothing like I expected. At first it starts out as most supernatural thrillers do, but towards the middle it became apparent that not everything was as it seemed. One thing that stood out to me was the transformation of the main character’s belief in the supernatural. Kylie is portrayed as an individual with a history of substance abuse and potential mental health issues who is placed on house arrest after a failed robbery. At first she is very skeptic of any supernatural beings in her house, but after a series of mysterious events she is convinced the house is haunted. Just as quickly though, she changes her belief that these disturbances are due to a person living in the walls who is playing games with them. Even though the audience knows that she is right about the person in the walls, because of her situation, the psychologist and police think that she is crazy, and they dismiss her claims. This reminded me of my experience volunteering in a psychiatry ward at a hospital. Despite their reasons for being admitted or their actual mental state, many of the patients there were labelled as crazy or delusional because of where they were. At first this may seem appropriate, and for many their clinical diagnosis is accurate, but for some people I was not so sure. It sometimes seemed that a lot of their behavior or beliefs were not taken seriously, and were simply passed off as a product of their mental health issues. Similar to Kylie’s situation, what if they were telling the truth and no one believed them because everyone thought they were crazy? Without going into details, I remember one patient who thought that they were being followed and were on constantly edge, but the hospital staff said that was just because they were diagnosed as delusional and paranoid. Yet, what if this patient had a legitimate concern? Would anyone believe them? I think these are important questions to ask, and I thought this film did a great job of highlighting this issue of mental health, and the dichotomy between sanity and insanity. For instance, everyone believes that  they  are sane, but can anyone ever be truly sure? How do we know we are not insane living in an insane world, where those who are sane are demonized and ostracized?