Luciaphil, this is wicked funny!

umm...I think it's laudable that she'd talk on this, but, um why is she?
(She didn't live in Europe durring WWII nor is she a Jew, right?) ?!?

She's speaking because the theater is screening two of her documentaries.  Though her films aren't always limited to the subject of the holocaust, Happybat is right about her intimate connection-- her father (Count Carl Adam Moltke) worked in the Danish Resistance during WWII, and Alexandra was smuggled to the U.S. as an infant to keep her safe during the Nazi occupation.

She also wrote, produced, and directed Scandalize My Name, Stories of the Blacklist, which runs on BET from time to time and is very poignant.  Porraimos sounds very fascinating, especially in light of our recent discussion about the Romani gypsies.

First off, I ADORE your title, "Personal Hygiene: a Route to Better Mental Health?"

Yeah, but what could he have done? They didn't have anti-psychotic meds back then. Jenny reads as schizophrenic. The only thing that you can do for a schizophrenic, even now, is medicate. That's it. And it's a permanent/for the duration of your lifetime thing

I agree.  I think post partum psychosis is another possibility.  I'm also relieved to not be the only one trying to diagnose the medical conditions on the show, hee hee.

I've wondered, too, how long Jenny was ill.  The personality changes of schizophrenia can take months, even years, and it may not have been obvious to anybody that Jenny was mentally ill until she started having the delusions and hallucinations.  I suppose it's possible that Jenny had symptoms even before Quentin left, but they went unnoticed, or ignored... She was becoming illogical?-- chalk it up to being another hysterical female.  Maybe she started to become withdrawn after moving into Collinwood, but who can blame her in that dysfunctional household?  And whom could she confide in, or seek sympathy from?-- her cold, supernatural sister-in-law who has designs on her husband?  Perhaps she was becoming paranoid-- complaining that Judith and Edward and Grandmama and Laura were out to get her, or the servants were whispering behind her back, all of which was most likely true anyway.  It could be that she already had a personality disorder when she married Quentin, and the symptoms were exacerbated by his leaving her.  Add to that the stress of noticing that your SIL has also disappeared, throw in some pregnancy hormones, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The medical community did do a little better than nothing back then, however.  Hypnosis was a treatment for schizophrenia.  Psychoanalysis was very new and might've been helpful to her earlier on.  She was about 30 years too early for chemical treatments, shock treatments, but thankfully also a frontal lobotomy.  The biggest obstacle for Jenny is, I think, her sex, cuz women back were thought to not have the mental capacity of men.  Grrrr!!!

The best she probably could have hoped for was to be housed in room that got some natural light that was clean and where she had some decent clothes. But even then . . . I mean, this is a woman who was definitely a danger to herself and others, so we're talking the bare minimum in furniture and amenities.

I agree that she was far better off at Collinwood than in an asylum, and that a change of clothes now and then and some assistance with grooming would've been nice, and if only the Collinses weren't so hell bent on making Jenny the other family secret so they could've provided better accommodations than the tower room.

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In case anyone is interested in catching Roger Davis in the upcoming ep of Rockford Files (Monday, Jan. 6 on WGN - 9 a.m. Pacific/noon Eastern), I've been told that he's very good in it playing an obnoxious cowboy (a persona he seems to have perfected ).  And James Garner's character punches him out, heheh.

No...but I mean in 1897.  He's in his late 20's.  So if he's spent the last 10 years or so with hookers, he'd have already had VD for quite awhile -- ya know what I mean?
I mean in the show right now.

 Hi Midnite!

Hi, sweetheart.  I know what you mean, and I was just having a little fun too.  But if you want me to put my nurse hat on (on no, not THAT!), untreated syphilis might progress to the phase in which it causes serious effects within those 10 years (it usually does in 3 or 4), but it could also remain latent for many years.

Cute epilogue!

Congratulations, all!!