Airing for the first time this coming Saturday is Lifetime’s Call Me Crazy: A Five Film (“Life is anything but normal”) starring Jennifer Hudson, Octavia Spencer, Brittany Snow, Melissa Leo, Ernie Hudson, Jason Ritter, Jean Smart, Lea Thompson, Melanie Griffith, and more.

Mental health issues such as PTSD, bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia are featured in five interconnected brief pieces. Lifetime reports, “Through the five shorts named after each title character — Lucy, Eddie, Allison, Grace and Maggie – powerful relationships built on hope and triumph raise a new understanding of what happens when a loved one struggles with mental illness.”

Each character in Call Me Crazy may show up in other stories in addition to her own. Lucy (Brittany Snow), a law student diagnosed with schizophrenia, is in three of the shorts, for example.

At least one therapist will be portrayed. Octavia Spencer, who plays Lucy’s therapist, talks about the Call Me Crazy with Erin Hill, Parade: “‘I hope that viewers learn that people with mental illness deserve a shot at a productive life and deserve to not be defined by their illness,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize how many people don’t get the support and therapy that they need to live productive lives. We need to take that step to learn as much as we can about mental illness because those diseases are non-discriminating — age, gender, socioeconomic or educational background — it doesn’t matter. The more we know, the more equipped we are to aid people who might be in our family or set of friends.'”

A movie trailer is available below:

Allison Keene, Hollywood Reporter: “…’Grace,’ directed by Laura Dern, is the most stylish and emotional, though each segment has its moments (Bryce Dallas Howard does a particularly good job of portraying the pervasive and claustrophobic sadness of mental institutions in ‘Lucy’). Ashley Judd‘s ‘Maggie’ is rushed and can feel messy, while Bonnie Hunt‘s ‘Eddie’ is a fairly rote visual portrayal of depression but still emotionally resonates. ‘Allison,’ directed by Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones’s Diary) is a companion piece to ‘Lucy’ that is good but not remarkable.”