Charlie's Presentation Of Psychological Disorders In The Film Charlie

. His symptoms are recognized early on in the movie, the main character’s, Charlie, disorder isn’t revealed or realized until the very end of the movie. Charlie was sexually abused by his beloved Aunt Helen every weekend at a very young age. Throughout the movie, viewers are shown random memories of how he saw his aunt through his innocent eyes before he was molested. These nice memories cause people to believe that Aunt Helen was a nice part of Charlie’s life. It isn’t arguable that she was a big part of his life and impacted it greatly; it was just all for the wrong reasons. Because of this abuse Charlie suffers from other mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Aunt Helen dies from a car accident on Christmas Eve; she was on her way to pick up Charlie’s birthday present.

He shows major criteria for PTSD by often having distorted blame for himself causing the traumatic event. At the very end, he attempts suicide while repeating to himself: “it’s all my fault.” This example stresses the depression from his traumatic event experienced early on. He often has dissociative reactions, or flashbacks, of the memories of his aunt molesting him when he was under the age of 10 years old. Another criteria that Charlie meets is the inability to be happy. This side effect reminds me of the quote, “I am both happy and sad, and I’m trying to figure that out.” Here he is coming into terms with the fact that while he is happy with his quality of life and the people surrounding him, yet he is still followed by a low dark depression cloud. At the very end of the movie, Charlie’s family is informed of his prior molestation, and he is put in therapy where he regularly sees a therapist once a