Borderline personality disorder is characterized by intense shifts in mood. This is often accompanied by periods of intense aggression, substance abuse, and self damaging behaviors. People with borderline personality disorder will sometimes attempt suicide impulsively in periods of extreme depression or anger. Often times people with borderline personality disorder feel extremely bored, empty, mistreated and alone. Intense feelings of loneliness usually are followed by frantic efforts to avoid being alone.…
After this hospitalization, Pete found out that the homeowners, of the house that Mike had broken into, decided to press charges against Mike, as they did not feel safe in their own home. Pete tried to explain to the homeowners about Mike’s condition, however they did not have any sympathy. In fear that his son, could potentially go to jail, Pete decided to use his skills as a journalist, in hopes that there was something he could do to help his son. This led to Pete interviewing others that are either directly or indirectly (family members), impacted by mental health disorders. Some of the interviews included prisoners in the Miami prison, family members of individuals that are mentally ill, court officers, and employees that worked at the jail. Pete talks about many individual’s experiences with the mental health care and legal systems. Many of these individual’s stories, were disturbing and shocking, as these two systems are, unfortunately skewed. Making it difficult for patients to receive adequate health care for their psychological issues. From a nursing standpoint, this book was interesting and…
When a psychotic break lands him in a New York mental hospital with a diagnosis of bipolar 1, McDermott not only fights to regain his own sanity, but battles the longstanding ignominy against those deemed to be “mentally ill.” With his mother, the Bird, ever by his side, he conquers the unpredictable ebb and flow of his disease and learns how to take back control of his life. After years of personally combating stigmas against mental illness, McDermott uses his own experiences as a platform to give a voice to those who lack the lucidity to do so themselves. An electrifying memoir, McDermott lifts the veil covering the lives of those with a mental illnesses, bringing awareness to the opprobrium and mistreatment of those with diseases no different than cancer or diabetes. After being blown away by McDermott’s heartening candidness and vulnerability, I implore that the masses grab a copy of Gorilla and the Bird. It is only by being exposed to stories like Zack McDermott’s that we are able to understand the injustices in the world and fortify the movement to combat…
A piece of the history of mental illness that stood out to me in this material was The Case of Mrs. Packard and Legal Commitment. Back in 1860 Elizabeth Packard was put into an institution by her husband because at the time it was legal for a husband to hospitalize their wives and stayed there for three years. When she returned home her husband locked her up and planned to send her back to the asylum. She was able to get out and went on to spend her life campaigning to protect women's rights. I selected this piece of history because I didn’t realize how much power men had over women back then and how just their word could lock up a woman. It was so shocking I had to read it a second time to make sure I read it right. This definitely makes me…
In this article, the incarceration of the mentally ill is encouraged because it is safer than keeping them in mental institutions. It claims that mental institutions are extremely dangerous by their very nature and the nurses there are trained to treat the mentally ill, not to keep them from hurting themselves or other people. In prisons however, the guards are equipped with the experience of a 16 week training program and are able to handle any commotion that might be made without endangering the lives of the prisoners or the public. This viewpoint is contrary to that in Pete Earley’s book because it endorses the imprisonment of the mentally ill, while in contrast Earley strongly believes the mentally ill need treatment, not imprisonment.…
Soaked, little, and naked is how the viewer finds Susanna in the middle of Girl, Interrupted. Or rather, soaked, little, naked, and hysterical. A state James Mangold utilizes to further illustrate his message. The film serves as a vehicle for Mangold to discuss madness and the society it exists within. Valerie, the asylum’s registered nurse, throws Susanna, the film’s suicidal protagonist, into a tub filled with water in order to snap Susanna out of her depressed state. Susanna lashes out at Valerie with every hurtful vulgarity she has within her. Despite this, Valerie remains calm and collected. In this interaction between Susanna and Valerie, madness is portrayed in its most basic form; it is an ongoing battle between the individual and the environment surrounding it. The individual is a victim of his environment, overwhelmed into regurgitating the detritus surrounding him that are readily filtered and suppressed by those deemed sane by society.…
Bibliography: Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 1962. Print.…
Girl interrupted is a gripping tale of a girl’s maladaptation to the challenges of life. The movie focuses on a young girl named Suzanna Kaysen growing up in the 1960s and struggling with the world around her. Suzanna is admitted to Clarmoore institution after she consumes a whole bottle of aspirin and alcohol to deal with her pain. When admitted to Clarmoore she claims she was not trying to commit suicide, but that she just had a headache. She is overwhelmed and apprehensive as she enters the institution and observes the people around her…
Before R.P. McMurphy arrives, the ward is your basic average mental institution. Men line up to receive their medication, they do puzzles and play cards, and the evil head nurse and her muscle, a group of big black fellows, carry patients off to be shaved or for electroshock therapy. The people can't do anything about it, though. After all, some of them are…
Explore through any film of your choice using either Vogler's, Voytilla's or Cochrane's model, the concept of the Hero Journey as discussed by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero of A Thousand Faces.…
As a class, we watched the movie, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, which is regarded as a classic film that left a lasting impact on how viewers view treatments of various mental illnesses. The procedures such as lobotomies, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) were harsh and give to patients without any thought to the lasting effects on their minds. The treatments seemed a way to keep the patients under control. After seeing the movie, the audiences viewed the treatments for mental illness as dangerous, inhumane and used with abandonment. The show also brought to light how patients were treated in a large mental institutions, making them question how awful mental healthcare was and how much it needed to improve. The film depicts the several psychology phenomena.…
Susanna Kaysen, in her memoir Girl, Interrupted, recounts her eighteen-month stay at a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts. The events in the book took place in the 1960’s, meaning outside the hospital’s reinforced walls, the world was bustling with racism, social activism, and the Vietnam War. The story is not told as a chronological series of events, but rather as a collection of memories, darting between various periods of Kaysen’s visit. Throughout her stay at the hospital, Kaysen met a variety of women who influenced her life profoundly, including a self-proclaimed sociopath, a girl with a face disfigured by burns, and a meth addict. In Girl, Interrupted, author Susannah Kaysen achieves her purpose of elaborating on the dangers of confusing unconventionality with insanity, through characterization, impressionism, symbolism, and her…
Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest examines the lives of several patients at Oregon State Hospital in the 1950s towards the end of deinstitutionalization movement the U.S. Ive chosen to explore the character of Chief Bromden, a chronic patient diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the film. The institutional processes of 1950s mental hospitals that may have created dependency, hopelessness, learned helplessness, and other maladaptive behaviors. This is strongly exhibited in the film, through nurse Ratched’s cold, dominating manner of running of the ward.…
Over the years, mentally ill persons, especially the youths, have been the subject of harsh treatment by the society. Such is the case given they portrayal as criminals that need incarceration to rectify their behavior. A depiction of this kind does not reflect the sympathetic character that human beings must exhibit when dealing with the mentally ill. Mental illness is like any other type of medical conditions that requires equal and nonjudgmental treatment and care of sufferers of this fate. In illustration of how the society has failed on this account is a case study of Ashley Smith who undergoes painful experiences until her dying day. She is a young mentally ill Canadian woman whose experiences are unthinkable and inhumane given the obligation…
Throughout the years, millions of people have been admitted to mental institutions for a variety of reasons. However, mental hospitals have been under scrutiny for years over their methods of treatments of their patients. Set inside an Oregon mental hospital, in his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey argues that self-worth is discovered by breaking the system of oppression.…