Mental Illness In What's Eating Gilbert Grape

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INTRODUCTION Mental illness can have a tremendous effect on not only the individual suffering, but to their family. "Mental illness often has a ‘ripple effect’ on families, creating tension, uncertainty, troubled emotions and big changes in how people live their lives" ("Families and friends"). A family member who suffers from a mental illness can have a great impact on numerous physical, psychological and social aspects of the family. Creating nursing priorities can help to create developmental and behavioral functions of a family to help the family bond and cope with a mental illness. The film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” by Lasse Hallstrom, portrays a family who struggle to cope with the enormous impact that a mentally challenged child “Arnie” can have on a family. Although the whole family is involved in Arnie’s care, it is clear that Gilbert, Arnie’s older brother, takes on the primary giver role. Throughout the movie, many scenes tend to dramatically show the amount of stress, frustration, aggression, and separation on the family that is ultimately created from Arnies mental illness. In this paper we are going to discuss the impact of chronic illness on the grape family, two family centered priorities we have chosen using the Calgary Family Assessment Model and one nursing intervention for each priority using the Calgary Family Intervention Model. Physical, Psychological, Social Impacts on Family When a loved one has a mental illness, it can be a challenge for the whole family: parents, siblings, friends and relatives. Coping with a mentally challenged child "is a shared experience for families and can affect all aspects of family functioning" (Reichman, year, pp.). From the movie, the Grape family is not only ... ... middle of paper ... ...amilies reported that the nursing team’s commendations were “an extremely important facet of the process” (Robinson as cited in Stanhope & Lancaster, 2011, pp.654). Conclusion Overall the movie illustrated that having to care for someone suffering with a mental illness is no easy job and it will bring in many other issues as well. No matter the social, psychological and social impact that a chronic illness can have on a family, ______________. Through nursing interventions, action can be taken to address priorities to decrease caregiver burden and to strengthen roles and alliances within a family. Interventions such as communication, commendations and positive encouragement can create a more positive environment for the family. Throughout the movie Gilbert proved that he was willing to sacrifice his self-independence in return for the good of Arnie and his family.

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