This dramatic and engaging film, full of surprises and ironic twists, dramatizes the issues surrounding mental illness -- the challenges of dealing with people who often can't understand nor accept that they're sick; and how our society ignores and even punishes patients and families living with mental illness; and the shortcomings of the mental health care delivery system.

The film deals with the multitude of mentally ill homeless who become guests of the American prison system, which ironically has become the largest supplier of psychiatric care in the world.The end of the road for them may be in one of the 750,000 unmarked graves in Potter's Field, New York City. BEDLAM will speak out for the mentally ill. As a society, we must reach out to them. They are severely neglected and discriminated against, and they desperately need our help. They can’t speak up for themselves – they and their families often suffer in shame and silence.Psychiatric research has come a long way in developing effective treatments, but these treatments often don't reach hundreds of thousands of those who need them, and who sometimes are literally living on the streets, homeless, in great pain themselves and at great expense to our emergency rooms, jails, and courts, not to mention the sadness many feel who see them.