Desperate Lives
Desperate Lives is a 1982 American made-for-television drama film about drug use in a high school.Their two teenage children, Scott and Sandy, fall in with the wrong crowds at their high school and eventually become involved with drug experimentation.Sandy, after ingesting angel dust made by her boyfriend in the school's chemistry lab, jumps through a glass window of the school (purposely cutting her arms with the cut glass in the process) and is subsequently paralyzed from the fall.A caring idealistic guidance counselor, Eileen Phillips, sees the problem that is going on in the school and, after other tragic incidents involving two other students (one of which involves Scott and his girlfriend smoking drugs and crashing their car off a cliff) and when no one else on the staff is willing to do anything about it, takes the steps to deal with and confront the problem.When hosting a 1994 episode of Saturday Night Live as the star of Mad About You, Helen Hunt showed clips of her earlier acting career during her opening monologue, including the scene from Desperate Lives where her character jumps out the window.