Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis?

Filmmaker Andy Wakefield's investigative documentary focuses on a severely autistic teenage boy named Alex Spourdalakis, whose challenging life was made all the more difficult by a series of successive failures by doctors and hospitals in his native Chicago to treat him for extreme, chronic gastrointestinal pain. A handicapped boy raised by a single mother and godmother, Alex's relatively happy young life was changed at the age of 14 when he developed intestinal agony that he could not explain and which was ignored by physicians who considered Alex's problems to be psychiatric. Kept restrained for a total of 76 days and given scores of inappropriate drugs for psychosis, seizures, anxiety, and a host of other conditions he did not actually have, Alex was not only misdiagnosed time after time but also essentially tortured by medical communities entrenched in rigid bureaucracies. The film goes into great detail about these developments—much of it was shot during the worst part of the extended crisis—and then takes a shocking, dramatic turn. Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis? serves up a powerful cautionary tale about systemic failure within the healthcare system to meet the needs of those with autism and their caregivers. Extras include bonus interviews and featurettes. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)