At the end Günter Wallraff shows a positive example: He visits, now without a hidden camera, a closed psychiatric facility in Herne, in which, however, the doors are all open. In which people deal with each other, instead of just bored in hallways and gradually despair. As a message to people who need medical attention, this is important: Yes, of course you can get some!
Before, however, it is almost exclusively about the sometimes frightening abuses in other psychiatric institutions. The "Wallraff" team, Wallraff's team of reporters, "undercover in psychiatric services and youth welfare" during the research for the latest episode of the RTL series, which this time is called "Behind closed doors". In the course of the film, the reporter becomes a nurse practitioner Petra on the acute ward of a psychiatry in Frankfurt. A reporter becomes an intern Phil. And a teacher works in Wallraff's behalf as a supervisor Melanie in a house in the Eifel. It is done on hairstyle, glasses and clothes, and then it starts with a hidden camera.
The promise of a hidden camera is that it makes states visible that otherwise could not be made visible. The idea that Wallraff has pursued for decades is that undercover researchers create transparency by putting on a cloak of invisibility: they are not noticeable as reporters but can act as such. So it is in this film of the series, in which the secretly filmed faces are blurred with a frosted glass veil and most of the voices are alienated. He relies entirely on the power of his pictures, no matter how vague.
Bad words and urine pools
The desperation of a depressive patient sitting on her bed in patent-leather shoes and whether she is "ready", as she says, comments on an obviously overworked nurse in the staff room, saying that perhaps she is "a lesson" and next time she thinks better about whether "it is necessary to make suicidal remarks".
You can see a urinal pool in a corner that says, as one of the reporters who introduced himself as an intern, that even after three hours he has not been cleaned up. Sick people are fixed, allegedly for days.
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Door to a cellar - in which the "Team Wallraff" scents grievances
And it's about punitive measures such as food deprivation or a de-escalation room in a youth welfare facility, where - according to the film team, against the recommendation of the competent authorities - young people would sometimes be locked for several days if they did "something"; without daylight, unobserved for a long time, allegedly temporarily with bucket instead of toilet access (which denies the establishment).
A "further incapacitation"
Experts comment in between the "extremely unfriendly tone of the handling", the "further disenfranchisement" of the patients. The conditions at the overcrowded acute care unit in Frankfurt, where a doctor's visit in a scene lasts only 16 seconds, where patients according to the film quietly instead of therapy, called a specialist "psychiatric stone age".
How often, when Günter Wallraff, who lends the reporter team names and expertise and comments on the scenes, sometimes off-screen, has his fingers in the game, it's about the novelty value of the research alone with less. On which stations people feel badly treated, one can read in similar form also on portals like klinikbewertungen.de. Rather, it is about attracting attention to a topic that is haunting people who do not have much power in this regard.
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Scene from "Team Wallraff" with sadistic monologues
Wallraff himself said before the broadcast that "never before in this massiveness has been tried" to prevent a program in the series "in advance". Of course, he also created attention with it. He announced even before broadcast reactions of authorities and politics without a subjunctive to strive: "Here is a lot to change there."
Connection error or fake?
With a scene, the "Team Wallraff" may damage his cause, because it damaged the credibility: In a youth welfare facility for people with mental health problems, there is excitement in the dining room, as an angry teenager suddenly runs to the window. The undercover reporter from "Team Wallraff" comments that he is trying to jump out. "Another resident can stop him at the last moment ... What does not notice here in the room, but one of our cameras randomly picks up: The 13-year-old runs into the next room, climbs out of the window on a canopy and can be down on a metal chain on the So he runs away. "
In the next scene, the window opens and the reporter turns her hidden camera down. There is snow outside. The said camera, however, who accidentally filmed the 13-year-old from the outside while towering, shows a snow-free parking. (Here you can watch the reportage in the media library.)
How can that be? Has the snow scene been turned on another day? Or what do the pictures show, if not what the text says? Where are you from? And how in the movie?
The political causal research for the states, which in the film is after many examples in exaggerated brevity still operated, ultimately amounts to a policy-driven economization of the medical area. On too much dominance of the administration of the medical profession. Overcrowding and overstraining. Jann Schlimme, a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, who appears in the film - as well as "transparency about what happens in closed psychiatric hospitals" - calls for "a regular psychiatric program on behalf of the Federal Government".
One is immediately ready to agree with him: yes, transparency would probably be the prerequisite - old Wallraff school. The question of how transparent the montage of his film is, however, remains.