Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel adds to mental health stigma

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, a Netflix docuseries, is four hours long. Feature films and documentaries tend to last 90 minutes to two hours. Although Crime Scene: Cecil Hotel was four hours long, it did not tell significant facets of the story regarding the 2013 disappearance of Elissa Lam.

How could Lam, a creative, adventurous college student who did not dabble in drugs or dangerous men meet such a tragic ending? The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel should have focused on the trajectory of her bipolar disorder and the challenges involved in treating it.

At what age was she diagnosed? What were her past episodes like? What was her treatment plan? How does bipolar disorder influence behavior? The story I would have told would have been of the evolution of her writing, the arc of her bipolar disorder, and the failure of her treatment.

Screenrant.com’s review agrees, “In Crime Scene’s attempt to sustain suspense over the course of four episodes, it misses out on an opportunity to fully examine the complexities of Lam’s mental health issues, and instead focuses on amateur detectives who continuously challenge the findings of forensic pathologist Dr. Jason Tovar.”

Elevator footage

Footage from the Cecil Hotel’s security cameras captured several minutes of Elissa Lam getting in and out of a hotel elevator on the night before she was due to check out of the hotel. From the comfort of their living rooms, web sleuths, armchair detectives, devoted countless hours to combing the footage for clues and came up with complex conspiracy theories to explain her behavior in the elevator.

Anyone with a background in mental health watching the elevator footage would have concluded that almost certainly Elissa Lam was experiencing mania, a psychotic episode, and imagining an entity with whom she was trying to communicate.

Someone in the throes of mania can experience auditory and visual hallucinations, because their brain has ceased to function properly.

It was ironic watching the professional detectives at work in the field. They watched hours and hours of security camera footage, combed every inch of the hotel for clues, and tracked down and interviewed everyone Lam came in contact with during her few days in L.A. The “web sleuths” obsessively watched the elevator footage hour after hour and surfed the Internet.

I do not understand the logic behind drawing conclusions on a tiny shard of evidence.

How did these web sleuths have so much disposable time that they could spend hours and hours surfing the web deceiving themselves into believing they were conducting research? We have Americans working two low-paying jobs and not making ends meet. We have dedicated professionals in so many fields working excessive hours. Others use their spare time to volunteer or pursue creative endeavors or both.

Managing bipolar

Lam was only 21 years old, a young adult. The prefrontal cortex, the judgment center of the brain does not fully develop until one is 25 or 26. As a young adult, it’s challenging to accept and embrace a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Embracing the diagnosis would mean finding out everything possible about bipolar and making whatever lifestyle accommodations necessary to promote remission of symptoms. An integrative approach is needed, but if no one explains all of this to you or coaches you through this process, just having a prescription in hand is not enough. Consistent outpatient treatment is needed together with targeted therapy such as dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), interpersonal social rhythm therapy (IPSRT), or addiction counseling.

At the end of the docuseries, it is revealed that she wasn’t taking her medication as prescribed in the days before her death. What’s implied is that had Lam been taking her medication none of the events would have transpired.

If only it were that simple. This docuseries, like countless other media portrayals, misrepresents the complexity of treating mental health conditions. For example, if someone has an eating disorder that prevents their brain from getting the proper nutrients and prevents their endocrine system from functioning normally, no amount of medication is going to take away all the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

Missed opportunities

Because our cultural IQ regarding mental health conditions is lacking, there were missed opportunities for intervening and perhaps halting Lam’s downward spiral into psychosis. The two hotel roommates, the hotel manager, and the game show event manager all observed her strange behavior, yet none of them saw a medical emergency. All of them simply saw an annoyance they wanted to get away from.

Shallow portrait

All we know about Elissa Lam by the end of the documentary is that she liked to write and to post her musings online.

We endured countless interviews with the web sleuths, where were the interviews with family members, friends, teachers, and acquaintances? I don’t think the documentary even mentioned what Lam was studying in college.

The roommates who couldn’t tolerate her behavior were not interviewed nor was the game show event manager who kicked her out of the game show taping. The hotel manager was interviewed.

Morbid

A number of the web sleuths incorrectly concluded that Pablo Vergara, a black metal musician who goes by the stage name of Morbid, was responsible for Lam’s death. These sleuths trolled Vergara until he himself had a breakdown.

Cnet.com’s Netflix’s Cecil Hotel documentary is a dangerous, bloated mess, reveals that Vergara became an award-winning filmmaker:

“Spending half your documentary suggesting this man, pushed to the brink by an online mob, could have been responsible for Lam’s death is senseless and potentially damaging.

“In 2016, three years after the Elisa Lam case, Morbid received a scholarship to the New York Film Academy (NYFA) and one of his films won the award for Best International Fictional Film at a film festival in 2019. Catch up more with him since the series here. “

Netflix documented how Vergara was stalked and received death threats. They interviewed him and used him to make their docuseries. Why would they fail to mention his success in their very own industry?

We unnecessarily lost a spirited, highly original young woman to a mental health condition that can be successfully treated. If the media continues to carelessly and shallowly portray mental health conditions, we will lose more individuals instead of rehabilitating them. #bipolar #mentalhealthawareness #storytelling #Netflix