Mental illness is apparent in Hamlet and One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest. Although the main characters from each book are prisoners to different disorders, it is very clear that they are not mentally stable.…
4. Briefly describe the FIRST event in the movie that indicated to you the character was really mentally ill.…
The book, Crazy, was an interesting, and informative non-fiction book, about the struggles that mental health patients and their family members encounter. Pete Earley starts off the story by talking about his son Mike, who started to act strangely in his senior year of high school. It turned out that Mike would later be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and was prescribed medications. Mike thought he was fine, therefore would frequently stop taking his medications. When Mike was in the hospital, he refused treatment, and because he was not a danger to himself, a danger to others, or gravely disabled; the doctors could not force him into treatment. Because, Mike stops taking his medications, his symptoms got worse. Pete discussed a time that…
Pat the main character of the movie has bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disorder is also known as Manic Depressive Disorder. Bipolar Disorder consists of mood swings from the lows of depression to the highs of mania. These mood swings may happen as often as a few times a day to a few times a year. The exact cause of Bipolar Disorder is still unknown. Since the exact cause of Bipolar Disorder is unknown it is unknown what parts of the brain is exactly affected by Bipolar Disorder. Current research indicates that structural abnormalities of the amygdala, basal ganglia, and the prefrontal cortex are the parts of the brain that are affected by Bipolar Disorder.…
By adulthood, each of us has stood in judgment of a film at some point in our lives. We sometimes judge the quality of the acting, the cinematography, or the writing, taking note of the entertainment value of each. Within some movies, however, is what some would argue is a far more important aspect that deserves attention, that of the film’s content. When that content involves a psychological disorder, this attention often turns to scrutiny, leading to arguments about whether the portrayal of the disorder is accurate, and whether the public mind will be altered by its exposure to that portrayal.…
In the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", John Nash displays classic positive symptoms of a schizophrenic. This movie does a fair job in portraying the personality and daily suffering of someone who is affected by the disease, although the film does not give a completely historically accurate account. In the film, John Nash would fall into the category of a paranoid schizophrenic, portraying all the symptoms that are typical for this illness. Nash suffers delusions of persecution, believing that there is a government conspiracy against him. He believes that because he is supposedly a secret agent working for the government breaking Soviet codes, and that the KGB was out to get him. In addition to these delusions, Nash experiences hallucinations which are shown from the moment that he starts college at Princeton University. He hallucinates that he has a roommate, when in reality it is uncovered later in the film that he was in a single occupancy room his entire stay at Princeton. Additionally, he frequently has conversations and takes advice from this imaginary roommate. He also imagines a little girl that is introduced to him by his alleged roommate. While going about his daily life, he is constantly surrounded by these inventions. These are classic positive symptoms of the paranoid schizophrenic, which are heavily supported by DSM-IV. Psychological predictions also agree with the behavior John Nash exhibited in the movie. This movie accurately teaches the public the positive affects of a schizophrenic. The movie does not portray schizophrenia as a split of Nash's personalities, rather a split from reality. He imagines other people and hallucinates vividly throughout the movie. Even at the conclusion of the movie, John Nash learns to accept and cope with his psychological disorder. He learns to ignore his hallucinations and is very careful about whom he interacts with. At…
“She had her first psychotic break when she was fifteen. She had been coming home moody and tearful, then quietly beaming, then she stopped coming home.” (Page 1). In the story Silver Water, Amy Bloom’s main character Rose who is mentally ill and had her first psychotic breakdown when she was 15. Her sister Violet wants everyone to know that she was normal before the illness happened. Rose was taken to many different therapist one including Doctor Walker who talked to her in third person even when she was next to him. He treated her like she was only known from her sickness. Then, Doctor Thorne changes Rose. He helps her through her illness and allows her to have a chance to be normal. Doctor Thorne later dies and Rose starts to return to her old ways. Many people look at ill patients only as the illness. They do not give them a chance to be a normal person, while other therapists allow them to have a life outside their illness. In Silver Water, Amy Bloom uses, Doctor Thorne as a symbol of healing to Rose’s battle to be normal.…
Something in the movie that I found really interesting and that I covered before in this post: ( A comparison between Psychoanalytic therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and psychopharmacology) http://hbookreviews.blogspot.com/2015/05/psychoanalytic-therapy.html is that "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did a review in 2004 of clinical trials and found that four percent of children and adolescents that took antidepressants thought about or attempted suicide ("Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)"). Two percent of the people who took a placebo attempted suicide. This means that taking an antidepressant doubles your risk of committing suicide. As a result, the FDA put a black box warning the following year in order to alert the consumer and…
Many movies have portrayed psychological disorders or used them as frameworks for plots or themes. Running With Scissors does not lack mental health references. This movie review will provide a plot summary, identify developmental themes, describe developmental theories, discuss counseling interventions, and include a personal reflection of the movie.…
Girl, Interrupted (1999) directed by James Mangold is largely based on a semi- autobiographical book by the same title. The movie chronicles eighteen year old Susanna Kaysen’s experiences surrounding her stay at a mental institution. It is 1967, a time of social change and unrest. Susanna makes a half-heart attempt at suicide, ingesting a bottle of aspirin and chasing the pills with a bottle of vodka. She is taken to the emergency room, her stomach is pumped and she survives. Afterwards she meets with a psychologist who explores her more recent feelings and experiences. The psychologist concludes, with her parents assent, that she would benefit from a stay at Claymore, a private mental institution. The next year and nine months forever alter her life. When Susana arrives at Claymore, she is immediately introduced to a completely different lifestyle. Her daily schedule comes to include regularly conducted “checks”, sessions with a psychiatrist, and medication. To an outsider the patients seem to individually represent the stereotypical persons one would expect to find in an institution. Susanna’s roommate, Georgina, is a pathological liar. Polly, nicknamed “Torch”, had, as a girl, poured a flammable substance on herself and set herself on fire. Daisy has an eating disorder, an unhealthy, very sexual, relationship with her father and wishes to almost replace her mother in some circumstances. Janet has anorexia and has become addicted to laxatives. Cynthia is a lesbian. Lisa, whom Susanna comes to befriend and at one point seeks to imitate, is a psychopath. To Susanna these girls come to be her friends, support system and alternative, temporary family. Susanna is eventually deemed cured, no longer a threat to herself or others, and allowed to leave. Her stay had given her a better understand of others, altered her perceptions of what is and isn’t “crazy” and allowed for a sense of calmness and security to pervade her life.…
In the novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, many of the patients in the ward have lack of self-respect and dignity. The lack of dignity and self-respect causes many people to become depressed, and even mentally ill. The three patients that lack the most self-respect and dignity are Billy Bibbit, Chief, and Harding. These three characters have had tragic past experience that causes them to lose their dignity, or "man hood". Billy Bibbit lost his dignity by "flubbing" the proposal to the woman he loves, Chief lost his self-respect by being ignored in the past, and Harding lost his man-hood because he can not satisfy his wife. All of these patients suffer from their lost pride and dignity, and all of them became mentally ill from the lack of…
I decided to base my clinical assessment of a movie character on Conrad Jarrett, the lead character of the film Ordinary People. Conrad is seventeen years old and is the only child of Beth and Calvin Jarrett. The Jarrett’s live in the affluent suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois, where Calvin works as a successful tax attorney. The Jarrett’s have just recently experienced a family tragedy, where their eldest son, Buck, drown in a boating accident, while Conrad witnessed the entire event. Six month after the accident, Conrad has become severely depressed, and slit his wrists with a razor blade in a failed suicide attempt. His parents discovered him unconscious in the bathroom, and immediately committed him to a psychiatric hospital. He spent eight months in treatment and has recently returned home, as well as resumed his classes at Lake Forest High School. He is struggling socially, academically, and has a strained relationship with his mother, Beth. Immediately following his discharge, Conrad continues to experience nightmares, and flashbacks to the boating accident in which he watched his older brother die from drowning. He is also experiencing chronic agitation, appetite loss, poor concentration, and avoidance of his former friends and extracurricular activities. When Conrad was receiving treatment, he was initially diagnosed with major depression with agitation, without active suicidal ideation. He attends psychotherapy twice weekly with Dr. Tyrone Berger.…
This paper analyzes and assesses the personality of the character Felix Unger (played by Jack Lemmon) in the movie, The Odd Couple. The paper starts by offering a synopsis of the movie, which is followed by a description of Mr. Unger, his presenting problem, a mental status examination of him, and a history of Mr. Unger’s background. Next the paper offers a five-axis diagnostic impression of Mr. Unger and rationalization for such diagnoses. The paper develops a case formulation which includes the pathology behind Mr. Unger’s diagnosis and recommendations for treatment. Both the case formulation and recommendations for treatment are validated by empirical research on the disorder and treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder. The paper concludes with a hypothetical analysis of what the author imagines it would be like to work as Mr. Unger’s therapist…
1. What is the title and year of the movie? Why did you choose this movie? (Very brief) What mental illness does the character have?…
In the movie, Robert Porter or Prot had many moments where examples of this disorder were shown. In the beginning of the movie he spoke on how he lost his father at a young age, which is a traumatic moment for any child because losing a parent isn’t easy. This specific event causes stress on any person. Dissociative Identity Disorder was also shown in the movie when Prot would only eat fruit and when he did he ate everything, including the peel. This event showed that he as in Robert had an eating disorder. When Robert was under hypnosis he had flashbacks as Dr. Powell asked him questions that led up to the reason he acted the way he did when he was taken around others. When Robert was taken around a family, there was a moment where he had a flashback as the little girl ran through the sprinklers and tried to stop her. This moment brought back the moment when he got off work and went home to find his wife and daughter dead after finding out they’ve both been raped. When Robert seen the man that did these things to his family he snapped his neck and went to hold his daughter. The sprinkler memory came from when he went outside after this had taken place and kneeled on the ground crying over the sprinkler. This moment caused a lot of stress on Robert and caused him to attempt suicide.…