High Anxiety Starring Mel Brooks... and millions of us!

When too many things in my life go awry I have the tendency to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. Why am I writing about this on a public relations and entertainment blog? Because there is one movie that helps me to laugh off my own anxiety and panic attacks, put them into some perspective and even make fun of myself. I love the movie High Anxiety, starring Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman.

The classic Mel Brooks comedy is about a famous psychiatrist who just happens to suffer from high anxiety, himself. Mel Brooks plays Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke, a revered east coast psychiatry professor who is offered a position at a prestigious psychiatric hospital in California. What he comes to find out is that the hospital staff are keeping people “crazy” to continue to make large sums of money from the patients’ families. Simultaneously, Brooks’s character is secretly being treated for his own anxiety by his old psychiatry professor and mentor, an ancient looking shrink meant to be a humorous take-off on Sigmund Freud, himself (accent and all!).

If you ever fall prey to anxiety or panic or any variation of it, or even if you just love Mel Brooks’s brilliance at poking fun at serious subject matter, High Anxiety is a must-watch!

You can catch this comedy classic on DVD or on Netflix.