Mental Disorder In Silver Linings Playbook

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In the movie, Silver Linings Playbook, it all started with a man named Pat Solitano who had a mental disorder. He was recently released from a psychiatric hospital and now resides with his parents. He had lost his wife and his job and life just was not happening in his favor. His aim was to win back his wife, which happened to be quite difficult in his case. That is until he met this widowed woman named Tiffany Maxwell, who promised to help him reach out to his wife if he returned a favor and danced with her in a competition. Pat wrote letters to his wife and in turn Tiffany delivered them. We later find out that Tiffany was the one all along writing back to Pat and that she had fallen in love with him. Directly following the dance competition, After noticing Pat’s uncontrollable anger and mood swings, he was diagnosed to be bipolar. Upon being released from the hospital, Pat was very compulsive and persistent in reaching out to his wife. Throughout this movie we saw him go from extreme euphoria to being ballistic. For example, One night Pat could not find his wedding video and his anger went through the roof, which left the house torn apart and his parents hurt. He also had a trigger that regularly set him off making him rash and angry. He walked in on his wife cheating on him while their wedding song was on, so every time he hears the song he lashes out. Although it is normal for something like this to affect someone strongly, Pat’s emotional outbursts were scarily difficult to be handled and For example, his wife cheating on him was by far one of the biggest impacts. Pat was always living a bipolar lifestyle, but he just self managed his condition, keeping his symptoms to a minimum. This incident escalated his condition, which pushed him to his breaking point. Another thing that could have affected the development of his mental illness was by him not taking his medication. Yes, there are some pretty bad side effects of most medications, but this was physician subscribed and he refused to take it. The medication could have subsided or in terms lessened the severity of his condition. Towards the end of the movie, we see Pat finally giving in to take his medication after many violent outbursts. One last thing that I feel could have escalated his condition was his father. In Pat’s family, he was always seen as the outcast and was not treated the same as others. His father says in the movie that he regrets not spending as much time with him as a kid and that he was trying to make up for it now. His father did not know how to handle Pat’s violent mood swings as a child and that itself lead to them having an unhealthy father-son relationship. One thing that I have learned throughout this chapter is how important family is in helping a person with a mental illness with guiding them through their process of recovery. There are many factors that can drive and worsen a mental disorder, but there

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