Delaney Rustons father was a paranoid schizophrenic. As a child, her life was so disrupted by his behavior when he was having an episode of illness that, as an adult, she decided to hide from her father, with an unlisted phone number and address.
Ten years later, after becoming a doctor and mother, Delaney made a documentary of reconnecting with her now more stable father. National Public Broadcasting is showing the documentary, Unlisted: A Story of Schizophrenia, during Mental Illness Awareness week (check local listings for times). Steve Lopez, the LA Times journalist who wrote The Soloist, about befriending a talented homeless schizophrenic musician (Jamie Foxx played the lead role in the movie The Soloist) calls Unlisted beautiful and powerful, a love poem.
Delaney not only has the perspective of being in the medical field as an adult, but she can refer to an autobiographical novel her father wrote during the onset of his schizophrenia. She also has an opportunity to meet with people who have been involved in her fathers life.
Knowledge of her fathers life is the path to understanding him. But their reconciliation is not smooth sailing, as Delaney confronts family members who have their own opinions about what should have been done and as her father, by the very nature of his illness as a disease that affects self-perception, wants to go off his new more effective medications. Which he does. His subsequent disappearance sparks a life and death crisis.
