How Psychological Problems Can Affect People's Lifestyle

Movies often contain characters with psychological problems or that have an altered state of mind. To learn how learn more about how psychological problems can affect people’s lifestyle we can compare movie films with our knowledge that we have acquired in psychology class. The movie “The Perks of being a Wallflower” shows characters with different psychological problems and altered states of mind. The movie also does a good job of showing how drugs can make you act.
The movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is about a freshman boy named Charlie that just lost his best friend to suicide. He enters high school alone until he makes a senior friend in freshman woodshop. Patrick brings Charlie to a party and introduces him to his friends that consider themselves as the “misfit toys.”
As Charlie gets to know them better he realizes that he has a lot in common with Sam. He begins to have strong feelings for her, but gets sidetracked with MaryElizabeth when she asks him to Homecoming.
Charlie breaks up the group for a few days after kissing Sam in front of MaryElizabeth. Only later to find out that the reason Patrick was so mad was that Brad’s dad had caught him and Patrick together, and Brad didn’t defend him. The group comes back together after Charlie sticks up for Patrick in the cafeteria.
The night before Sam leaves for college, her and Charlie begin kissing, as she touches the inside of his leg, Charlie begins to have a rush of flashbacks. After Sam leaves, Charlie calls his sister and scares her so she calls the cops. Charlie ends up in the hospital and talks to a psychologists to help him get over his problems. By the end of the movie we learn that Charlie’s Aunt molested him as a child.
This movie portrays the main character Charlie to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression. Charlie shows signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because throughout the movie he has flashbacks to when he was a kid and the memories he shared with his aunt. Charlie struggled to control the reoccurring flashbacks because he was trying so hard to try and forget the memories of being molested as a child, by his aunt. Throughout the movie Charlie also showed signs of being depressed. One large reason he is depressed at the beginning of the movie is because he has to start high school alone without his best friend. The previous summer his friend had committed suicide and Charlie was at a loss.
The mental/psychological disorders and the way the teens acted in the movie can be compared and contrasted to material from our psychology class. The first scene in which we can compare the movie to psychology is when Charlie comes home and hears his sister up in her room fighting with her boyfriend. As he turns the corner, he sees his sister get slapped across the face. She makes Charlie promise not to tell their parents, and after hearing that Charlie has a flashback to when he was young and his aunt saying, “now don’t go tell your mom okay.” Our book talks about psychological disorders, how we can get them, and how they can be treated. Though the book mainly talks about three psychological disorders and fails to go into detail about post traumatic stress disorder, it does mention that we can get psychological disorders. One way is from a stressful life event, which is exactly what happened to Charlie when he was a child.
The second scene in which psychology comes into play is the scene after the football game where Patrick brings Charlie to a party. A boy offers Charlie a “brownie,” little did Charlie know that there was marijuana in the brownies. After eating the brownie Charlie’s judgments were impaired, and he said whatever was on his mind. He also experienced mild hallucinations at the party. From our reading we learned the affects that marijuana has on the brain. Marijuana causes mild euphoria, hallucinations, short-term memory loss, and impaired judgments, to name a few of the symptoms. So by having previously learned the effects that marijuana has on the brain we can know that there was marijuana in the brownies without the movie directly telling us.
Another scene in which we can compare our psychology class to the movie would be the scene after the homecoming dance. Charlie wishes that he could break up with MaryElizabeth, but he doesn’t know how to do it. They are at a party and he places a square looking pill on his tongue. He begins to experience very vivid flashbacks and ends up in the driveway scooping snow. That night he tries to walk home, but ends up passing out and the cops question him for drug use. From his symptoms that he showed we could conclude that he was on drugs through our background knowledge in psychology. We then have to analyze the severity of his symptoms to decide the exact drug he took. I believe he took a LSD drug because LSD’s cause frightening flashbacks, hallucinations, and distortions to your sensory awareness.
There was one scene toward the end of the movie that made everything fall into place and shows the reason’s behind Charlie’s psychological problems. The scene was the night before Sam went to off to college. Sam and Charlie were down in her room and they began kissing. Sam set her hand on the inside of Charlie’s thigh, immediately Charlie began to have multiple intense flashbacks. The flashbacks showed us scenes from when he was young with his aunt and how she touched the inside of his leg. As Charlie experienced all of these reoccurring flashbacks we can infer that Charlie still is struggling with post traumatic stress disorder.
After reviewing major scenes from the movie I would diagnose Charlie with having post traumatic stress disorder and depression. Charlie shows signs of having post traumatic stress disorder because throughout the movie he continued to have flashbacks to when he was a child and the memories he shared with his aunt. The flashback became more intense and occurred more often towards the end of the movie. Charlie also showed signs of depression throughout the movie, especially at the beginning when he kept to himself and lied to his mom about being okay. He had just lost his best friend and was a little lost in life. At parties he took drugs to help with the pain and to “get away from the real world.” Towards the end of the movie his depression worsens to the point where he is about to commit suicide.
The best treatment plan for Charlie would be to attend psychotherapy and to take an antidepressant drug. The psychotherapy could help him cope and overcome his problems and the antidepressant drugs would help with his mood.
After watching the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” I have a better understanding of psychological disorders and their treatment. The movie increased my knowledge on post traumatic stress disorder because we didn’t talk about this disorder very much in class. I have learned that one of the main symptoms to this disorder his having flashbacks to the stressful life events that had a negative impact on your life. I also learned that one of the best treatments is psychotherapy. This allows the patient to say how they are feeling and get what they need to say off of their chest. This movie also went into more detail about how being raped or gay can really affect your lifestyle and could cause you to have a psychological disorder, like Sam and Brad.