All new mothers and infants are visited by nurses in their homes. The embargo blocks psychotropic drugs, but Green’s filming of a community-based mental health center is a glimpse of humanity elusive in the United States where access to mental health services is even more limited by income than medical care. One in six people incarcerated in U.S. prisons has an untreated mental illness, and American parents with a mentally ill child too often must give up custody, making their child a ward of the State, to gain access to expensive residential treatment programs. Green is African-American and reveals the racial disparities in health care access through the brutal experiences faced by her brother when he loses his job, becoming homeless, and her mother’s constant struggles with an HMO. By contrast, Green said 60 percent of Cuba’s 11 million people are of African descent and everyone has equal access to services.


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