Behavior Disorders in Movie The Shining

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The Shining

The Shinning, a horror movie that was released in 1980, featured Jack Nicholson, as a writer who is left in charge of the Overlook hotel during the winter. During this time Jack began to developed schizophrenia among many other personality and mood disorders and attempts to murder his own family. After reviewing this film it became apparent that there was a mixture of accuracy and exaggeration of the development of schizophrenia. Jack had this disorder, but also had symptoms of other personality and mood disorders. For the sake of Hollywood the film did take schizophrenia to entirely new levels. Some of this hype was generated around Jack becoming a full fledge killer. The delusions that he suffered from were undeniably crazed and did have a central theme; however, they were induced by other substances. The themes that ran strong throughout this movie were persuasion. Jack was constantly told by his delusions that he needed to take control and steer his family in his own direction. When his family urged him to leave this hotel, it only generated more hostility and anxiety, which pushed the decline of his mental health.
When Jack arrived at the Overlook hotel it was evident that he had suffered from substance abuse in the past. Jack had once been a heavy alcoholic. This addiction had caused him to inflict violence upon his child in a violent rage. During this rage he snatched his son up by the arm and broke it. Although it is not clear, this could have been a sign that he was manic depressant. His mania could have been storms of violent rage instead of a constant high. In the beginning of the movie the viewer learns that Jack is a writer. This “creative” career” also has an important impact on his depression because his career can be up or down. In many cases, people who have careers in the arts such as writing, art, or acting can experience times of insecurity, which can induce a depressive state. This new change allowed Jack to start fresh and enable him to write with no distractions.
As Jack and his family start trudging through the long winter in the hotel it becomes apparent that Jack starts to develop “cabin fever.” His writer’s block causes anxiety and anger towards his wife and son. Jack also starts to develop an obsessive compulsive behavior pers...

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...t were much more dramatized in the name of Hollywood. For the sake of it being a horror movie, it did have some very gruesome and disturbing images of fear and death.. I did like that this movie showed the dark, scary, and disturbing world of schizophrenia. It shows that things don’t always work out for the best all of the time. Schizophrenia is a horrible disorder because it slowly deteriorates mental functioning. People with this disorder do loose everything they have and must face a very scary world alone. There can be times were they have violent rages and things almost seem as a horror movie. I felt that this film did have some relevance to this disorder and depicted the dark side very accurately. Although some parts of the film were exaggerated I feel that overall there was validity in portraying the world of a terrorized schizophrenic. Hopefully is the future there will be more films that share a more accurate side of schizophrenia on a day to day bases. I feel that the public should be more educated on this disorder because it does affect a lot of our population. Society as a whole has a responsibility in educating themselves in order to improve the care we give to others.

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