In the book Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen, one of the biggest focal points is mental illness. Mental illness can be tough to talk about, simply because the phrase “mental illness” encompasses such a wide range of conditions and conjures up images of deranged people, but it is very important, especially in this book. There is a certain stigma that people who are put into mental hospitals because they have medical problems or are insane and a possible danger to society. While this is sometimes true, it is far more common for patients to need help for a disorder, but just don’t know where to go or what to do, and can end up putting themselves or someone else in danger. This is the case with Susanna, who is the autobiographical main character of the book. She provides a perfect reason as to why it is important that mental illness must be talked about more. Susanna is admitted to the McLean Hospital after she attempts suicide and is then diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She is at first convinced that there is nothing wrong for her, which is something that many patients go through, and is one of the important reasons that mental illness should be discussed more. Susanna says “I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it.” (153) This quote is very effective at demonstrating what goes through Susanna’s head, and the minds of many others. Many people who have existing
The video named, “The New Asylums,” is about people in prison who have mental illness. Many people who have mental illness are held in prison throughout the America instead of hospitals or facilities, and they are more tend to be homeless before arrested and put in to jail. According to video, there are some mental health treatment meetings in prison. However, some psychologists think that people who have mental illness in prison need hospitalization. Moreover, the video claims that inmates who has severe mentally illness cant follow the rules.
As The Washington Post, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Dena Kleiman describes, mental institutions are strict, but they also give the patients what they need. Some patients can be in a mental institution for their whole life, but others can get out if they aren’t a danger to themselves or others. Many patients know they will never leave, but Holden will because everyone is asking questions about what he is doing for school next
Lawson portrays her mental illness in way that is relatable to people in similar circumstances. She articulates the daily internal struggle to fight off the mental demons that threaten her ability to find peace and happiness. She also shares her story so people who are unfamiliar with mental illness can learn the signs and methods to help the people diagnosed. She discloses her struggles to provide others with experience, strength and hope. She encourages people who are struggling to reach out for help from loved ones.
The movie that I watched for this essay is Girl Interrupted. Girl Interrupted is about an eighteen-year-old girl named Susanna Kaysen who is admitted to Claymoore psychiatric hospital. She ends up in the hospital after having an overdose of medication. She begins to deny accusations that she was going commit suicide. Susanna has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Anna Quindlen in the article, “The C Word in the Hallway” argues that mental illness don’t get enough awareness or help that it actually needs. Quindlen supports her argument by using similes, tone and bias’ to state that many teachers are not trained to recognize mental illness and so some just dismiss it and so that leaves “over two thirds of the mentally disturbed children without any help”. Insurance also does not aid in covering the costs because “health insurance plans do not provide coverage for necessary treatment”, or if they do then they think that they should “penalize those who need a psychiatrist instead of an oncologist”. The author's purpose in writing this was to inform people about the scary reality that many kids and teens face today and to argue that it is nothing to joke about and that it needs to be taken seriously.
When people hear the words, “mental illness,” they think of insane asylums and psychiatric wards, but that’s not necessarily the case. Yes, back in the 1800’s they did have asylums for people with mental disorders. But that was when doctors didn’t fully understand mental illnesses and disorders. But currently, doctors are able to comprehend illnesses and disorders.
The slam poem " And the Psych Ward Says" by Anita D is a powerful piece of spoken word that addresses the stigmatization of mental illness and the need for greater understanding and compassion towards those who are struggling with mental health issues. This text informs the audience of the effects that mental health has on its patients, and how most of them end up in asylums that do nothing but heighten their issues. Which the asylums then neglect and make their patient's stay even worse. This poem addresses that the patient only had to stay for three days, but on Monday the worker said that they only operate on business days, so they still had more time to break down the patient.
Everything from how her interactions with her family to her perception of her environment and how it evolves throughout the story allow the reader to almost feel what the narrator is feeling as the moves through the story. In the beginning, the only reason the reader knows there may be something wrong with the narrator is because she comes right out and says she may be ill, even though her husband didn’t believe she was (216). As the story moves on, it becomes clear that her illness is not one of a physical nature, but of an emotional or mental one. By telling the story in the narrator’s point of view, the reader can really dive into her mind and almost feel what she’s feeling.
Mental Illness affects an immense amount of individuals no matter their race, culture or age. It is everywhere we go, yet still an issue some choose to ignore; whether it is the person facing the illness or those around them. People handle their sickness in a variety of ways. Some by using violence as their only answer, others run away from their issue and majority choose to accept and make the best of it. After reading the novel The Secret Life of Bees, it would be easy to think that the main theme is discrimination or family, but in reality it is actually focused on the toll that mental illness takes on a family.
After she was released from Mclean mental hospital, she requested that she be allowed to see the diagnostic of the doctor. Kaysen knew she needed to go away for a little while and needed some help, but she always thought that she had received the wrong treatment and that there has been some sexism about the judgement made about her. Susanna wrote about her life in a curious mind set. She was never upset about where she was, but she never truly knew why she was there or how she actually got
Psychoanalysts’ understand human personality through behaviors by looking into experiences, including the origin of emotions, thoughts and behaviors. Through the analysis of the movie Girl, Interrupted, many of the characters behave in all sorts of manners, ranging from being unreasonable, frightened, happy, sad, or disturbed due to their varieties of behaviors. All the characters include different ailments that affect the way they act, respond, and interpret situations. In accordance with personality theories, the movie Girl, Interrupted explores the memoir of a young woman through personality disorders, traits, and humanism during her stay in a McLean psychiatric institution during the 1960’s. Susanna Kaysen, the protagonist, is diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder, due to her attempt at suicide by consuming an entire bottle of alcohol with aspirin.
She explains that by going into this hospital and being deemed mentally ill that she was hurting people or she is some type of burden to her family. She knows that having a mental illness is not something that is viewed as normal or right. People expect her to just get better and to snap out of it. Moreover, they see her as some type of monster or a pathetic excuse for a person. When in actuality she is just someone who may be struggling with a mental illness, or one that was created for her.
The movie Shutter Island is overwhelmingly filled with themes of mental health. Before moving into the content of this paper I would like to disclose this movie contains a false and melodramatic portrayal of mental illness, this is not an accurate representation of the field. The movie begins with Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner traveling to a secluded island containing a mental facility for the criminally insane. They are supposedly there to investigate a missing patient, however, throughout the movie we see clips with signs and symptoms that point to Teddy’s own diagnosis of a mental disorder. That maybe Teddy isn’t exactly on the island for an investigation but has his own hidden secrets to uncover.
The movie I chose to write my psychology review was on Girl Interrupted. The movie was based on the writer Susanna Kaysen’s and her eighteen month stay at a mental hospital, but the movie was directed by James Mangold. My reasoning’s for choosing this movie was due to the fact that it carried many psychological concepts to it. The movies main script revolved around Susana’s and with the crazy women in a mental institution. This movie had two main characters and they were Susanna (Winona Ryder) and Lisa (Angelina Jolie).
Girl, Interrupted is a film that portrays many different illnesses, but specifically the experiences of Susanna, the main character, who is a patient at a psychiatric hospital. The multipath model contains the different dimensions portrayed in the film: biological, psychological, social, and sociocultural. Susanna is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and some of the dimensions are applied to this disorder in the film. There is really no biological dimension shown in the film with any of the characters. There might be some genetic factors between Susanna and her parents with BPD, but it is not indicated so.