The movie “Girl, Interrupted” is about a young woman named Susanna who attempts suicide and consequently checks in to a mental hospital called Claymore. When she gets there she’s diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. There she meets many people but mainly focuses on Lisa, a proud sociopath, and Daisy, an implied incest victim who seems to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Susanna leaves Claymore with Lisa to go see Daisy and after Daisy’s suicide she returns to Claymore where she is later released. There was a wide variety in the movie “Girl, Interrupted” due to the fact that it takes place in a mental hospital. The three most prominent disorders present were Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Borderline OCD has symptoms such as compulsive hoarding, extreme anxiety, depression, and food aversions. It currently has no sure cause but it has said to be a product of genetics or abnormalities in the brain and serotonin levels as controlling serotonin tends to help in treatment of OCD. Obsessive Compulsive disorder is seen in 2.3% of Americans. It’s more prominent in adults than in children. Antisocial Personality Disorder, also informally known as psychopathy/sociopathy, is a disorder where people elicit manipulative behaviors and lack morals. This includes disregard for rules, violence, superficial charm, promiscuity, a superiority complex, and difficulty forming attachments. This is said to be caused by genetics as well as modeling, or watching other people perform this kind of behavior. 3.3% of Americans are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality disorder. It’s 70% more common in males than females and is seen greatly in Daisy only ate her father’s rotisserie chicken and would organize strips of chicken. When she was done she’d put the chicken bones under her bed. This shows she has OCD because she had taste aversions toward foods that were not her father’s chicken, and compulsively organized and kept the chicken. She also had anxiety as she was supposed to be taking valium which is for controlling anxiety. As well as Daisy, Lisa had an accurate portrayal of her diagnosis. Lisa showed most signs of having Antisocial Personality Disorder. She has a false charm as she interacts with orderlies and other patients of Claymore. She was also very aggressive towards Susanna when she found out Susanna was being released and showed no concern for her feelings as she read through her journal. In the same scene she explains how she feels as if she’s superior to Susanna. Unlike the others, Susanna was seemingly stable so it was a bit harder to see the symptoms Borderline Personality disorder. She did attempt suicide as explained in the beginning of the movie by chasing down a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. She also had unstable relationships with a professor, a boy named Toby, and an orderly at Claymore. In the flashbacks she had, she isolated herself from crowds and had a pessimistic attitude in all of them. For example, she talked to the principal about her plans after college and had a strong
OCD is broken down into two components the obsession and the compulsion. The first component; obsession is when an individual is consistently having these reoccurring thoughts or images about a certain problem or issue in their life. For example; an individual that has OCD can have a constant thought or image about getting sick or dying from the various germs or diseases that people contract every day. So this individual goes to the extreme to make sure that they do not contract any of these germs or diseases. That is when the compulsive component begins. This is when the individual takes these extreme actions to protect themselves from whatever they have these high anxiety feelings about. So continuing using the same example; this individual will consistently clean their homes every day for several hours at a time. They tend to clean their hands several times when out in public and are very tedious about where they go and what they touch while in public. They are also very caution about how they interact with other people. They just take extra steps to protect themsel...
Lars and the Real Girl was an independent film about a young man named Lars who lived a quiet stable life until he was struck with such severe mental illness that the whole community rallied to support him on his mission to recovery. Lars was a great example of a man who had suffered from early attachment loss and childhood trauma that manifested into psychological dysfunction.
As we now know, "Girl, Interrupted" revolves around Susanna Kaysen and her personal experience of being put in a hospital and being diagnosed. The memoir also included several other individuals that she grew to know and socialized with over her extended stay at the facility. Though all of these women slept under the same roof, their disorders and conditions where all for the most part very different. The main characters worth noting were Susanna Kaysen, Lisa, Georgina Tuskin, and Daisy Randone. Let us first begin with Susanna. We were capable of seeing signs that she may have a case of borderline personality disorder. First of all, we knew that she attempted to take her life by consuming a bottle of aspirin. BPD is characterized as having frequent uncontrollable actions. Attempted suicide is common amongst BPD patients. She has had several partners in the past but was incapable of maintaining a long term relationship. BPD patients have a hard time maintaining relationships and usually can’t work relationships out. She was quick to get married at the end, showing her desire to find pr...
There are a couple evident symptoms of OCD. People tend to do an action over and over again to calm their anxiety levels. They tend to not be able to control unwanted thoughts or actions, and spend minimum an hour each day on the obsessing rituals which gets in their way for daily life. Common obsessions are needs for symmetry or order, fear of germs, causing harm to other people, dirt or germs, etc. Common compulsions include constant bathing, hoarding of items, constant counting, etc. These signs can interfere with a person’s life and ruin relationships with others.
After reading Alessandra’s vignette, it is apparent that she has borderline personality disorder (BPD) (APA, 2013; Roberts & Louie, 2015). The symptoms that Alessandra presents are frequent tearful fits, yelling, chronic issues with her mood, frequent interpersonal problems with her husband, difficulty getting out of bed, “drama” with coworkers, inappropriate communication with customers, references of responding to others comments with suicide, and attention seeking with faking pain. To meet full criteria for BPD, Alessandra must first meet criteria A to F for a personality disorder, followed by criteria A for BPD.
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry. The acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and potentially psychotic. However, OCD sufferers generally recognize their obsessions and compulsions as irrational and may become further distressed by this realization. Obsessive–compulsive disorder affects children and adolescents, as well as adults. Roughly one third to one half of adults with OCD reports a childhood onset of the disorder, suggesting the continuum of anxiety disorders across the life span. OCD may be a result of changes in your body's own natural chemistry or brain functions. OCD also may have a genetic component, but specific genes have yet to be identified. OCD may stem from behavior-related habits that you learned over time. Doctors do not know the exact cause of OCD, factors that may play a role include head injury, infections, and abnormal function in certain areas of the brain and family genes seems to play a strong role. Most people who develop OCD it shows the symptoms by age 30. Often the person carries out the behaviors to get rid of the obsessive thoughts, but this only provides temporary relief. Not doing the obsessive rituals can cause great anxiety.
There are two different kinds of disorders, personality disorders and psychological disorders. Psychological disorders are illnesses that an individual experiences as episodes. Personality disorders are enduring traits that are major components of the individual's personality (Rathus, 2010). No matter what kind of disorder a person may possess their lives are affected everyday by them, it takes over their body and consumes them as a person. Disorders are often misunderstood. You do not have the ability to make a split second decision and then continue life without that disorder, it will take lots of counseling. While we are not trained psychologist everyone can learn or identify disorders in popular movies or television shows. In the movie, Mommie Dearest, directed by Frank Perry, Joan Crawford possesses several of these disorders, including bipolar, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.
OCD is an anxiety disorder that is described as someone with obsessive thoughts and/or compulsive behavior. People with OCD are caught up in repetitive behavior and thoughts that they cannot stop. Obsession is defined as unwanted, recurrent, and disturbing thoughts that a person cannot stop. These thoughts are unable to be suppressed and can result in severe anxiety. Compulsions are the result of the obsession. These are repetitive, ritualized behaviors that are done to alleviate the anxiety caused by the obsession. (2) The most common obsessions are fear of contamination, fear of causing harm to another, fear of making a mistake, fear of behaving in a socially unacceptable manner, need for symmetry or exactness, and excessive doubt. The most common compulsions are cleaning/washing, checking, arranging/organizing, collecting/hoarding, and counting/repeating. (3) Some people with OCD have rituals that help relieve the anxiety; however, that relief is only temporary. (4) Most patients (at least 80%) with OCD have both obs...
Joan Crawford, was one of the most popular and well known actresses in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Although her life was more extraordinary than mundane, she suffered from multiple personality disorders, as do many Americans. Personality disorders are patterns of inflexible traits that disrupt social life or work and may distress the affected individual (Rathus, 2016). The movie Mommie Dearest, captures moments in Crawford’s life that show her struggles with her personality disorders. Throughout the movie, you watch her personalities become more prominent and abusive. Her main disorders include borderline and paranoid personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as histrionic and narcissistic personality disorder.
For example, she lacks remorse or any form of sympathy or regret for her actions and sees herself as being superior to other people. Secondly, Lisa saw herself as being invincible, and at one point, Lisa and her friend Susanna described having mental illness as a gift, which allowed them to see and understand the truth.
“A lot of doctors and other mental health professionals just throw up their arms, and other mental health professionals just throw up their arms, and say, “What’s the point of even identifying antisocial personality disorder? What are we gonna do with these people?” said Donald W. Black, M.D, a professor of psychiatry. According to Wikipedia, Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. People with Antisocial Personality Disorder vary from serial killers, murders, thefts, and rapists. Thus making Antisocial personality disorder one of the most feared disorder.
Antisocial personality disorder is a mental disorder in which a person consistently displays no morals and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others heartlessly; they show no guilt or remorse for their callous behavior.
Impulsive, manipulative, irritable, irresponsible, self-centered, aggressive and remorseless. These are just a few characteristics that describe a person with antisocial personality disorder. According to Bressert (2016), antisocial personality disorder is a disorder that is characterized by an extensive pattern of disregard and violation of others rights occurring since the age of 15 years. People with antisocial personality disorder do not follow the social norms and their actions tend to be criminal. Symptoms include deceitfulness, impulsivity, reckless disregard, consistent irresponsibility and lack of remorse (Bressert, 2016). The actual cause of antisocial personality
...e several different theories that try to analyze the stem of this disorder. OCD can be attributed to stress, which can intensify or prompt the symptoms. Experts on this medical field also identify brain dysfunctions such as encephalitis, head trauma, or some other brain disorder as a possible cause of brain abnormalities that may result in OCD. The patient’s genetics can also have a pertinent role in the developing of the disorder experts believe that a person can inherit a tendency to develop OCD under certain conditions. An unbalanced level of brain chemicals according to serotonin theory can also be attributed to a person suffering from OCD. Lastly, learned behavior, is also a crucial factor that needs to be analyzed. If a child is taught that he/she may be predisposed to fear, he/she develop compulsions in order to reduce said fears when negative thoughts occur.
Self-destructive behaviors are also very common in individuals with Borderline personality disorder. Susanna validates this trait by her lack of motivation, conversations about suicide, and her suicide For example; Lisa, the diagnosed sociopath, displays very little empathy for those around her. This is made clear when she sees Daisy’s post suicide body and is not saddened whatsoever. Another accurate portrayal is the patient with anorexia nervosa Janet. Janet refuses to eat, is in denial about her condition, is emotionally labile, and is always exercising.