Mental Illness In Girl, Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen

There are many events that can foreshadow the rest of one’s life for the better, or, for the worst. In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Jane (the narrator) struggles with a mental illness that causes her to become very weak so her husband, John, takes her to a country home to heal. While at the house she stays in a room that has old yellow wallpaper. Jane is deeply disturbed yet highly intrigued and maintains her deep inspections of the wallpaper as she stays there. Though Jane seemed mostly healthy, her illness takes hold and she ends up believing she had emerged from the wallpaper. John knows Jane has an illness worse than depression and takes every precaution so that when she snaps, his name does not go down with her sanity.

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story.

Mental illnesses have a high prevalence amongst the United States population. Each year, tens of millions of individuals suffer and are affected by mental illnesses (National Institute of Mental Health, 1). These illnesses range from anxiety disorder, eating disorders, major depression, personality disorder, and many more. Yet, with the existing knowledge, mental providers and professionals, and the DSM-5, mental illness remains a growing mystery to the public. Literature has played a significant role in how mental illnesses are defined, their characteristics, and the portrayal of those who are mentally ill to the public eye. From memoirs on mental illness such as Susanna Kaysen 's Girl, Interrupted to Daphne 's Scholinksi 's The Last Time I

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. The protagonist of this novel, Lily Owens, has always had a troublesome life. Both her parents, Terrence Owens, also known as T. Ray, and Deborah Fontanel are ridden with illness, sadly caused from each other. Lily also meets a new family in this novel after running away from her cruel father who abuses her. This family is also dealing with mental illness. August Boatwright is a member of this family and has been surrounded by this sickness for more than half of her life. Two of her sisters have this problem and it has genuinely affected August for better or worse.

Untreated mental illness is dangerous and over time we have learned that locking people with a mental illness is not the solution but makes it worse. People with untreated mental illness face many consequences. “People with untreated psychiatric illnesses comprise 250,000 people, of the total homeless population” (mentalillnesspolicy.org). The quality of life for these individuals is extremely heart breaking, and many are victimized regularly.

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. In the final scene, we discover that Teddy (real name Andrew Laeddis) is severely suffering from his own mental health

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.  The author writes in a formal tone for parents, teens, and other adults to be aware of the seriousness of mental illness in teenagers.

Illness in women has always been a great mystery. When illness is studied, it is studied in men. With male symptoms, male bodies, and male drugs to fix the problem. The medical field has done very little to explore the ways that various illnesses both mental and physical effect women. They often do not know how to treat these illnesses when they do show up in women.

Holden Caulfield struggles with mental illnesses, which puts him in a mental institution talking to a psychoanalyst in the novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. Holden being in a mental institution is necessary for him to recover. People with serious mental disorders are admitted into mental institutions for various amounts of time. Mental institutions are necessary and helpful to people, such as Holden Caulfield, with many types of disorders and are effective for a majority of people and result in patients being grateful for their time spent at mental institutions.

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. The doctors suggest that Susanna stays in the hospital for about eighteen months. She wants to be a writer rather than going to an Ivy League college like what her friends were doing. The movie focuses on her journey during her stay at the hospital. She encounters many young women who have different forms of mental illnesses. There are several character that the movie mentions. The characters are Susanna, Polly, Georgina, Daisy, Lisa, Janet and lastly Cynthia.

When stepping inside a hospital to receive help, one should expect care, treatment, and respect. However, shown in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and “Howl,” American society equates mental illness with inhumanity. In both texts, the characters are forced to live without basic human freedoms and a voice to change it. Society pressures the mentally ill into becoming submissive counterparts of the community by stripping away their physical freedoms, forcing inhumane treatment, and depriving them the freedom of expression. By pressuring confinement and treating the patients inhumanely, society strips away their freedom to express themselves.

Girl, Interrupted, written by Susanna Kaysen in 1967, is a thought provoking memoir following her and fellow parents’ tragic and twisted experiences in McLean Mental Hospital. As a young adult Susanna Kaysen tried to commit suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills and following it with a bottle of alcohol. Her parents were very worried about her and suggested her to go to a doctor that her dad once knew. Kaysen visited the doctor who, after talking to her for a while, requested that she be sent to one of the best mental hospitals in her area. She had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She voluntarily left her parents, her boyfriend, her job; Susanna had to completely leave behind her life as she knew it. Once arriving at McLean the reader is quickly introduced to the patients that live there with her. Susanna introduces the patients that she became close with during her stay. For example, Polly, a young girl who was described as courageous and having a fiery personality. Another girl, Lisa, she was never predictable and always entertained the other residence with her imagination and her want to escape the ward. Susanna also introduces Georgia, her roommate, Daisy, a seasonal patient, and Cynthia, a patient with serious depression. Lisa Cody shows that even in a hospital girls can still be very cruel. Lisa Cody quickly became friends

I feel like this is because most of the movies or books I have seen about mental illness have not been focused on BPD. This disorder has not been learned in class yet, but after reading about BPD in the DSM-5, I believe that the portrayal of the disorder is accurate. Although, I feel like this film is more about mental illness in general and the experiences that come with it rather than just focusing on Susanna’s specific illness. The film had strengths and weaknesses on how it portrayed the different experiences of those with mental illness. Some strengths the movie had on mental illness portrayal include society’s view on mental illness, a good depiction of the thoughts, and the wide spectrum of mental health. Susanna’s parents did not want their friends to know she was in a psychiatric hospital, which is a common occurrence for many families who believe the stigma against those with mental health problems are too strong and that they would rather protect their image than the mentality of their loved ones. The thoughts of each character do well to depict what the thoughts may be of someone actually with their disorder, according to the DSM-5. In addition, the film shows how different each mental illness can be, showing how “normal” Susanna seems along with BPD, or how “crazy” (how some patients are referred to in the film) Lisa seems with her sociopathic tendencies. Each character is evidence to how large the

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).

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.