NBC Nightly News “Celebrities Making A Difference”: Glenn Close (video and commentary)

(Wednesday, November 11, 2009) NBC Nightly News “Celebrities Making a Difference” special week long series. Glenn Close shares her work to bring awareness and eradicate the stigma surrounding mental illness with NBC’s Anne Thompson.

Jessie Close is the younger sister and inspiration to Glenn Close. Jessie has bipolar disorder that went improperly diagnosed (although that detail is not clear in this segment) until age 47 even with their father who is in the medical field. Glenn was motivated by her sister’s life to use her celebrity status to speak out about mental illness through various appearances and public service announcements such as in the Bring Change 2 Mind. Additionally, Glenn has teamed with Fountain House in New York City to provide funding that goes to housing, education, treatment, employment and a variety of other support services to people living with mental illness that need some additional assistance to thrive in society.

The embed code provided on msnbc.com does not work with my WordPress page so I’m placing the link to the interview for you to watch below. Continue to read my reaction, and I encourage you to comment with yours.

NOTE: If the links do not work, go to the Making a Difference website and you’ll find links to each celebrity about 2/3 down the page under a heading “Celebrities Making A Difference.”

(VIDEO LINK) Celebrities Making A Difference: Glenn Close ‘My sister is my hero’

(VIDEO LINK) Celebrities Making A Difference: Glenn Close ‘I wanted to dig deep’

My Reaction…

I applaud Glenn Close for taking on the subject of mental illness because it is often overlooked, as she’s seen with her own sister, and still holds many false preconceptions. The statistic that played in the public service announcement clip that 1 in 6 people live in mental illness was surprising to me. It’s much more common than many of us would think. Programs like Fountain House provide a loving community for people recovering from mental illness through the work they do together to support the house. It was good to see Glenn doing some hands on volunteer work at Fountain House to show her commitment. It was, however, unclear from the interview alone how active she is with organization and in what capacity. Just surfing the website for Fountain House, I could not find Glenn Close’s name attached to anything which raised some questions about the extent of her involvement in comparison to what I witnessed with Jon Bon Jovi and Alicia Keys so far.

NBC Nightly News website– Making a Difference

Fountain House– www.fountainhouse.org

Bring Change 2 Mind– Fountain House article describing Bring Change 2 Mind

Bring Change 2 Mind (official website)- www.bringchange2mind.org

Facebook fan page– Bring Change 2 Mind

YouTube– BringChange2Mind