Author Laura Morton on co-directing the anxiety and mental health documentary Anxious Nation
Now on VOD after playing in theaters and festivals is Anxious Nation, a new documentary that takes a deep look into the crisis of anxiety and mental health in America, especially its crippling impact on kids and families. The riveting and introspective feature documentary is directed by Academy Award winner Vanessa Roth (Freeheld), and co-directed, written and produced by 21-time New York Times Bestselling Author and first-time filmmaker, Laura Morton.
Anxious Nation explores and captures the many faces and facets of anxiety. The film delves into the crisis of mental health and anxiety in America, while focusing on subjects ages 11-26 and their families. This unabashedly honest and insightful film provides audiences with a raw and intimate look into the lives of families and kids grappling with anxiety and the duality of how their parents are trying to understand and help. The filmmakers and executive producer Kathy Ireland, all moms themselves, tenderly share the vulnerability of these families in an effort to help others who are currently struggling with similar issues in private.
During the Annapolis Film Festival, Blackfilmandtv.com spoke with co-director Laura Morton on her involvement with the film and helping her daughter Sevey Morton through her anxiety issues. As an author who has written over 40 books and a staggering 20 New York Times Bestsellers, Morton is now taking her skills elsewhere and getting behind the camera.
What went into putting this project together?
Laura Morton: Well, it started with the fact that I'm the parent of an anxious child. And in 2018, I was sitting at my desk feeling incredibly defeated as a mom. And as a parent, I really didn't understand what was going on with my child, who was 11 at the time, and it seemed like whatever I did wasn't making things any better. So as one does, I put a post on Facebook, just one line "Kids with anxiety and dealing with it." And I got a lot of responses to that post. But it was the private messages that came in, that really rocked my world.I couldn't believe I was hearing from people that I knew well. We had never talked about our kids and their journeys. They've never talked about the struggles they were having. And remember, this was in 2018. And so you know, I'm a New York Times bestselling author and I felt like there was a story here, I felt like there was something I needed to dive into. So in 2019, I set out to explore anxiety. I wanted to understand why it happened, and how it shows up. I wanted to understand what we could do about it. Because I really thought it was just happening in my own home.
When did you look into whether or not your child had anxiety issues? Are you a single parent and if so, was that a determining factor?
Laura Morton: Well, for me, yes. To your question, I am a single mom. And there was a part of the equation I had my daughter through invitro. So there's a part of the equation where 50% of the equation I really knew nothing about. I had a donor that I didn't know. And so there was these behaviors. I could look at my daughter's hands and go, those are my hands. I was looking at her feet, that's not my feet. And when it came to her behavior, there were there were some things happening that I just didn't recognize, I did not understand what was going on. And it started very young age, it's very around the age of three. I took her to her pediatrician, and I took her to a specialist because there were things. What I would have wanted to do was check things off the list everywhere so we can get closer to what it is. It's not an easy journey for two parent families, or a single parent family. It's not an easy journey when you really can't recognize what's happening. And families if you've got one parent who really cuddles the child and has a tough love parents got a different set of issues that you're dealing with, right. It took me, believe it or not eight years for somebody to tell me that my daughter had anxiety, that's something very broken in the system. It was her diet. How’s her home life? It was all of these things that people were looking at, but nobody was really getting to the core of what the issue was.
And when somebody finally gave me that diagnosis, it was just amazing. I had her tested for ADHD and all sorts of things. It wasn't till she was 11 when somebody said, you know, "I think she's got anxiety, generalized anxiety." And it's a funny thing because it's a shapeshifter. So what was making her anxious when she was three and four was not the same thing making her anxious when she 9, 10, and 11. The reaction to it? I could never figure out what's causing that. We're all wired to the action first. We all have that fight or flight response, which is the exact place that our anxiety comes from.That gets like an overload. And it becomes problematic in your day to day life.
So if you have a problem, kids have a problem, they go to school, and they don't want to speak in front of the class or can’t take a test. Or they don’t want to stay home along and they need their parents to go to bed, when they go to bed These are all signs of anxiety, you wouldn't typically think are problematic, right? It’s just part of growing up, but it's all boiled down to what that childhood feeling. I think the most important thing that I learned in going through this entire process, is that what my child was feeling was real; it was real to her, and I couldn't process it through my adult life. Because I was putting my life experiences on top of hers. What she was feeling was 100% authentic and real. And every time I said to her, “We'll just get over it" or “Come on, toughen up,” I wasn’t doing her any favors.
You’re a storyteller, and you decided to put her on camera. How did she feel about that? She's part of the story, but not the whole story.
Laura Morton: Correct? The inspiration came from her. We really looked why I went on this journey. Where are we now? My daughter is going to be 15. She was 11, 12 and 13 at the time. So again, to answer your question, my daughter is incredibly proud to be part of this film, I gave her every option not to do it. She’s actually taken this opportunity to become a youth mental health advocate. She's using this as a way that she can inspire other kids, because she's still struggling. She hasn't gotten over it. This isn't something that's just over for her. This is something she deals with daily. She's using her voice, to spread the word that wants to you to hear that you're not alone.
Between capturing your daughter’s story and other individuals from different backgrounds, how long was the process?
Laura Morton: A great question. It was a process. It was a process of finding people any which way we could. But what I really wanted, and what was so important to me is that I wanted diversity. I wanted diversity, not just in cultural diversity, but I wanted diversity in socio economic. I wanted people from all over the country, I didn't want just a bunch of kids from New York and LA, which would have been very easy for me. I wanted to really see how anxiety was impacting all of us. I wanted LGBTQ+ representation, I wanted black and brown communities, especially black and brown communities representation that became really, really important to me as I set out on this journey. There were so many cultural differences. It was educational for me to understand what is a stigma mental health is in the black and brown communities. But what was really shocking to me, and really, really bothered me is that our system does not treat everyone the same.
The disparity in health care alone is a huge problem. It was equally important for me to find an African American expert for the film as well because I felt like that the community really needed to see somebody like them because I know there's so much distrust in the black and brown communities when it comes to the medical system. We really were very thoughtful in trying to bring as many people as we could. We had an Asian American girl in the film and her parents ultimately made her drop out of the film, which is part of the story. Because culturally, they felt like she would be branded like something was so wrong with her. It was the diversity in every way. Because anxiety shows up in a different manner. It was something different for every one of those kids.
Where do you go from here? What was your takeaway as a professional in this business, that you can move on to whatever your next project will be?
Laura Morton: Sure, well, first I want to address we are just getting started. We are ending our festival run and hitting theaters and then VOD. But we feel like this film is evergreen. We think this film will be around for a long time. It will be a go to for every school in the country, and we're already getting so much interest from all the schools. We feel like families will share this stuff with other families. As people and their children grow and age, this is going to become something they'll want to sit and watch together. We have some really exciting plans as we go forward. We are launching my own network. I’m launching the Anxious Nation network.