Abstract Psychiatry has a long and controversial history, and its legacy is often questioned in the arts. But how is psychiatry used by filmmakers, what do they think of mental illness, and how do they use it? What is their frame of mind? Psychoanalytically? Biologically? Sociologically or anthropologically? Cinema has not only produced a full spectrum of elements of mental illness but also showed its treatment (or lack thereof). Frames of Minds traces the historical display of interpreted neuropsychiatry and explains why it is a story about medicine and why it should interest us. Patterns and paradigm shifts in neuropsychiatry over the last century have emerged over the decades, and mental disorders on screen became more specific. The influence of the anti-psychiatry movement in documentary filmmaking was evident. The takeaway is that filmmakers like to break the rules and take chances with the awkwardness of mental illness and psychotic breakdown.