Bipolar Disorder In The Film Silver Linings Playbook

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Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks (nimh.nih.gov). People that have this mental illness tend to easily lose their focus and gets triggered by anything that changes their mood. There are two types of episodes that occurs manic and depressive. During a manic episode, a person often behaves recklessly, picking fights and lashing out at people. During a depressive episode, the same person might have little energy, feel sad and hopeless (helpguide.org). This greatly affects their relationships with the people around them especially their family, friends, or significant other. Unfortunately, there is …show more content…

Bipolar disorder is becoming so common that Hollywood has made several films about it, but probably the most popular one was the 2012 movie called Silver Linings Playbook. The film Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper, is set in Philadelphia as he plays the main character Patrick “Pat” Solitano Jr., a diagnosed bipolar who was released from a mental institution and later moves back with his parents. According to the Mayo Clinic website, there are two types of bipolar disorders: Bipolar I and Bipolar II. Bipolar I is about experiencing manic episodes and this can cause a significant impairment in the person’s life such as difficulty at work, social activities, or relationships. This could also cause to trigger a break from reality. Bipolar II deals with depressive episodes, but have never experience manic episodes and this can cause distress or difficulty in areas of the person’s life such as decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, or distractibility (mayoclinic.org). Between the two types of bipolar disorders, Pat Solitano expresses the symptoms for Bipolar disorder I. …show more content…

After being release from the mental institution, he tells his mother to bring him to the library to read some of Nikki’s teaching syllabus. Later that night, Pat finishes one of the books and gets furious about the ending that he throws it out of the window, breaking it. Afterwards, he goes to his parents’ room and wakes them up ranting about how Nikki lets her students read an awful book because a character died leaving in a sad note. He thinks that life is already bad as it is that it should’ve ended in happily ever after. The next day Pat decides to visit his old house where he and Nikki used to live. In addition, he stops by the local high school and talks to a teacher asking if Nikki still works there. The teacher gets scared and reminds him of the restraining order, in the end he doesn’t get any information about Nikki. Once he gets home, the police officer shows up and gives a warning to Pat to stay 500 feet away from their house and any establishments that he’s restricted. Another impact was during the Eagles game, when Patrick’s brother gets into a fight with a bunch of guys. At first, he was trying to calm himself down, but loses control seeing his brother getting beat up. This makes his father upset and starts blaming him for the defeat of the Eagles. The impact of Bipolar Disorder was realistically portrayed in the

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