Life Support Film Analysis

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Recommended: Essence of self help groups

Brief Movie Synapsis
In short, Life Support: You Can’t Live Without It is a powerful film inspired by a true story of Ana Wallace, a HIV-positive woman, who is a former drug addict living in Brooklyn. Ana is actively seeking to reconcile her past and improve the community through her advocacy work with Life Support, an AIDS outreach group. Ana, however, is faced with the difficult challenge of repairing relations with her boyfriend, Slick, who failed to disclose his HIV status to Ana, leading to her contracting the virus after shooting cocaine together. Furthermore, Ana seeks to improve her relationship with her teenage daughter that she lost custody of 11 years prior, due to her drug addiction. To better address such issues and challenges, Ana participates in a support group with other …show more content…

The eight group members seem to have much faith in the ability to reach their overall goals, as well as having high expectations of getting the help that they need through the group experience. Through the dialogue exchanged between group members, it is apparent that they share similar expectations of the treatment and much confidence in the usefulness and effectiveness of the group approach to healing. This self-help group for women living with HIV/AIDS undoubtedly provided much inspiration to its members and substantial improvements in attitudes, self-efficacy, and even improvements in physical health were noted throughout the film. Such feelings or relief and the minimization of emotional distress led me to believe the experience of catharsis was taking place as members shared their stories of guilt and shame with the

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