Jennifer Brea’s ‘Unrest’ premieres at the LSHTM

Jennifer Brea was a PhD student at Harvard University when she became suddenly ill with a high fever and became bedridden. She was initially misdiagnosed with conversion disorder, but eventually was identified as having ME/CFS.

“I learned that my disease, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), has been ignored by medicine for decades.” Jennifer created and produced a documentary film of her life coping with ME/CFS called ‘Unrest’. It has been a huge success and fell just short of an Oscar nomination.

In October 2017 some of the CureME team had the privilege of accompanying Jennifer Brea, our Steering Group Chair Dr Charles Shepherd and other guests at a private screening of ‘Unrest’ at the Houses of Parliament.

Our Biobank Leader Dr Eliana Lacerda and Biobank Coordinator Caroline Kingdon said: “It was very interesting to discuss the ME world with the MPs. With the help of ME charities and representatives we were able to discuss and highlight the sociodemographic burden of ME/CFS. We are hopeful that the discussions had will contribute to an out come in practical terms. We felt heartened to see so many busy MPs finding the time to watch this film.”

Since then, we were delighted to host our screening of the incredible film here at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, followed by a live Q&A discussion with a specialist panel.

The discussion was streamed and is still available to watch here. We were able to provide some of our seriously affected participants the opportunity to watch ‘Unrest’ and the Q&A from their homes. The film has heightened the importance of raising awareness of this debilitating disease.

The screening was a complete success and the buffet went down a treat!

November 2017