Girl, Interrupted
Girl, Interrupted: Borderline Personality Disorder
Girl, Interrupted is a thought-provoking film that accounts the struggles of a teenage girl, Susanna, who is trying to come-to-terms with her illness in the 1960s. She is committed to a mental hospital when she tried to commit suicide. The film portrays her relationships with her distant parents and intense relationships with other patients while she is hospitalized. She encounters many troubled souls like her, such as her pathological liar roommate, a sociopath, a girl who is addicted to laxatives and obsessed with chicken, and a girl with a disfigured burned face. Later in the film, Suzanna learns she is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized as instability in many aspects of daily functioning, including mood, self-image, behavior, and interpersonal relationships (Seligman, Walker, & Rosenhan, 2001, pg. 401). People with BPD have intense shifts in mood like depression, anxiety, and anger for few hours to few days. They are prone to intense aggression, substance abuse, unsafe sex, binge eating, reckless driving, and mutilation (Seligman, Walker, & Rosenhan, 2001, pg. 401).They typically attempt suicide impulsively due to the unpredictable moods and have intense, unstable relationships with people. Chronic feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and boredom are common. It is not unusual for them to put frantic efforts to avoid being alone because of their feelings of abandonment. A possible cause is childhood trauma, such as divorce, neglect, or abuse. Paranoid thoughts and dissociative symptoms can also occur. In order for a person to be diagnosed with this disorder, he or she must display at least five of the symptoms, according to the DSM-IV. It is more common in women, starts in early adulthood, and is by far the most prevalent of personality disorder diagnoses (Seligman,
Girl, Interrupted is a thought-provoking film that accounts the struggles of a teenage girl, Susanna, who is trying to come-to-terms with her illness in the 1960s. She is committed to a mental hospital when she tried to commit suicide. The film portrays her relationships with her distant parents and intense relationships with other patients while she is hospitalized. She encounters many troubled souls like her, such as her pathological liar roommate, a sociopath, a girl who is addicted to laxatives and obsessed with chicken, and a girl with a disfigured burned face. Later in the film, Suzanna learns she is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized as instability in many aspects of daily functioning, including mood, self-image, behavior, and interpersonal relationships (Seligman, Walker, & Rosenhan, 2001, pg. 401). People with BPD have intense shifts in mood like depression, anxiety, and anger for few hours to few days. They are prone to intense aggression, substance abuse, unsafe sex, binge eating, reckless driving, and mutilation (Seligman, Walker, & Rosenhan, 2001, pg. 401).They typically attempt suicide impulsively due to the unpredictable moods and have intense, unstable relationships with people. Chronic feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and boredom are common. It is not unusual for them to put frantic efforts to avoid being alone because of their feelings of abandonment. A possible cause is childhood trauma, such as divorce, neglect, or abuse. Paranoid thoughts and dissociative symptoms can also occur. In order for a person to be diagnosed with this disorder, he or she must display at least five of the symptoms, according to the DSM-IV. It is more common in women, starts in early adulthood, and is by far the most prevalent of personality disorder diagnoses (Seligman,