Crooked Beauty Analysis

Diagnosing an individual with a mental illness balances on a fine line between giving a life-long label and misdiagnosing. Mental illness is best viewed on a continuum allowing for a varying degree of severity. In the field, mental health professionals are faced with determining what signifies the appropriateness of diagnosing a mental illness. A professional’s judgment is impacted by their personal perceptions and observations, societies views and norms, and the patient’s history. The film, “How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity” demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing those who are mentally ill from those seen as healthy ( ). I will explore my reactions and thoughts regarding the participants’ experience as well as the mental health professionals. Additionally, I will share how this information is applicable to my future career in the field of social work.

Illness is one of the few experiences that all humans have in common and generally is met with empathy. However, people who suffer from mental illness are not privy to this treatment. For centuries, mental disorders have been demonized and stigmatized even in the modern era where humans have a much better understand of the mechanisms of the mind. Before the advent of psychiatry in the eighteenth-century people believed that mental illness was actually demonic possession resulting in the ostracization and murder of the mentally ill in the name of God. The Victorian era was met with a different view of mental illness, in that it was understood that it was a malady of the mind and people needed constant medical treatment, thus federally mandated asylums were created. Since mental illness was not understood there was a lot of misconceptions and fear surrounding the field. It is no surprise that the master of macabre and the creator of Horror, Edgar Allen Poe, decided to explore themes of mental illness in his stories. Poe’s most famous story about mental illness was The Fall of the House of Usher, where the main characters are plagued with an undisclosed mental malady. Through Poe’s use of point of view, style, tone, and tropes, he painted a perfect picture of the Victorian view of the mentally ill and the mind of the artist which was believed to be different faces of the same coin.

Psychiatry and psychology have struggled in the past to contextualize the nature of mental illness. Through this struggle, mental illnesses and their symptoms have been used as a means of controlling deviance and pathologizing emotions felt by certain groups of people. Social, political, and historical factors create the boundaries of sanity and insanity in which hegemonic, institutional power control minority groups, however, the manner in which these boundaries manifest have shifted over time. Jonathan Metzl in his book The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease explores the manner in which mental illness is used by institutions to control deviance through his examination of how the anti-psychiatry movement, subsequence

In her first journal entry Kaysen tells how the decision for her to go to McLean Hospital was based on a twenty minute conversation with a psychiatrist. Kaysen had been picking at her acne and been acting out in ways which would not be considered unusual for teens today, but at the time it was a sufficient excuse for commitment to an institution. In an interview, Kaysen further develops the idea that her illness was influenced by outside factors saying, “ [Her] retrospective account of her confinement at McLean Hospital makes a cultural intervention that challenges the notion that mental illness is rooted solely in the individual.” (Kaysan, 18). Being surrounded by girls with serious illnesses forced Kaysen to assume the role of a girl with a real mental illness. Society forced her to find something wrong with herself in an attempt to fit in. Kaysen questions what mental illness truly is. She asks,“Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?” (Kaysen 41). Because Kaysen was labeled as being mentally ill although she was not, it became hard for her to tell what truly pronounced someone as mentally ill. Was everyone slightly crazy or were just some better at hiding it then others? Living in such an uptight society, people had no choice but to put on an act of perfection. When someone began to “drop the

Entering the taboo world of mental illness, stigmatized as the crazy and psychotic by decades of

Members of society feel at peace knowing that their mentally disturbed are receiving ‘proper’ treatment, but when treatment entails electroshock therapy and lobotomies, how does one protest when they are unaware of this malpractice? In the 1960s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the lives of psychiatric ward members are changed forever when introduced to Randall McMurphy. While he claims to be insane, what separates him from the others are the means of comitance; Randall pleaded insanity to avoid a difficult jail sentence while the others more or less committed themselves. His confidence is a never before seen attribute in the ward that inspires the other patients to break out of their comfort zone to not only speak up for themselves against the overbearing head Nurse, but to embrace their masculinity and take power of their own lives. In Ken Kesey’s fiction novel, patients in a psychiatric ward are under the cruel regiment of Nurse Ratched when the introduction of new patient Randall McMurphy challenges her control to revealing themes of conformity, technological influence, and confidence.

In America, one in five adults has a mental health condition, a staggering statistic. Appreciatively, recovery is the goal in the mental health centers of 2017. Nevertheless, in the 1950s, patients were provided with inhumane treatments such as lobotomies. Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, provides an accurate portrayal of a psychiatric ward in the 1950s. The antagonist, Nurse Ratched, hopes her patients will not recover and manipulates them to gain authority. In contrast with the past, Nurses of the present day treat individuals with respect. Conduct towards mentally ill patients has changed since the 1950s in ways such as public attitude, medication, and

As I was reading The Beauty Bias, by Deborah L. Rhodes, I came across a statistic that perplexed me, saying the total “annual global investment in grooming” comes to $115 billion (Rhodes, pg. 32). This shocking fact provokes a worrisome question: Why do we, humans, spend so much time, money, and thought on our appearance? As a complex question, there are several equally complex answers. However, the simple answer is that everyone else invests their time and thought into your outer shell, eliciting effort from you to improve what they study - your external image. The concern placed on one’s fashion choice or natural features by society takes away from larger, more pressing issues such as the declining economy, or feeding third-world countries.

exaggerating symptoms and stereotyping individuals with a mental disorder. For example, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho, in which man with schizophrenia murders guests in a hotel, influences viewers to believe that all individuals suffering from schizophrenia are dangerous. However, that is rarely the case (Polatis, 2014). Therefore, it is refreshing to find a movie that accurately portrays the true personality of and individual living with a mental illness. The movie Silver Linings Playbook chronicles the experiences of Pat Solitano, a man suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder who was recently released from a psychiatric facility. Although this paper focuses on Pat’s experiences, it is important to note that the film not only takes on the task of portraying bipolar disorder, but also mental illness in general with other major characters suffering from a mixture of psychological or personality disorders. The film opens with Pat at Karel Psychiatric Facility in Baltimore, Maryland. We later learn that Pat was institutionalized for nearly beating to death the man with whom he caught his wife Nikki cheating on him. The rest of the film details

The portrayal of people being sickly creatures has been used in Hollywood film for a very long time. This has been in the endeavor of putting the viewing public in the shoes of the patient and entertain them with over the top portrayals of disease. For patients that are women in particular this has been achieved by defining them along the lines of vague terms such as them being over emotional and unstable. Despite the advancement experienced by the society, women have not yet fully seen the goal of equality realize fruition. With the expansion of the psychiatric and psychological terminologies, there now additional ways via which mental illness can be ascribed as a weakness for men and women portrayed in Hollywood film. This is best

Characters in both The Good Soldier and Mrs. Dalloway are deeply affected by mental illness at a time in which such ailments weren’t recognized as a real health issue. Due to this mark of shame that followed mental illness, there

In society, as shown in the novels, people are often too quick to write off nonconformist as crazy or insane. Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest both illustrate how society’s stern view cause them to treat mental illness unethically and take away from individualism.

People with a mental illness can be among the most disadvantaged in society, and many confront barriers as a direct result of their illness. Cognitive and communication impairments may pose challenges, while stigma and discriminatory attitudes can be worse than the illness itself and I can relate that to a movie called “side effects” that I’ve watched before. In New York, Martin Taylor is released after four years in prison and his mother and his wife Emily Taylor welcomed him. Unexpectedly, Emily is depressed and tries to commit suicide, hitting her car against the wall in the garage. Emily goes to the hospital and the psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Banks treats her and she decides

Yet, Cléo appears to be upset and restless by the fact that no one is giving her the attention she is accustomed to (Neroni 125). However, as the movie continues and Cléo meets more and more people and explores the world further while walking aimlessly, Cléo comes to grips with the fact that she may no longer represent society’s expectation of beauty if she does have a horrible skin condition. Thus, “Cléo sheds her synthetic self and finally reaches a state of calm self-awareness” (Elkin 220). However, before Cléo comes to grips with her fate, she rides around with her friend Dorothée, and explains to her friend how at least no one could see whatever has her alarmed, presumably a mole on her belly (Cléo From 5 to 7). The fact that Cléo is so fixated on her looks while she is facing potentially death is puzzling. Society expects women to worry about their appearance more than their health, which is also demonstrated when women are encouraged to maintain a specific weight and figure by sacrificing meals and working out incessantly shown in Breillats Fat Girl and A Real Young Girl as well. (Beauvoir, Fat Girl, & A Real Young Girl). Neroni explores this further as she writes:

This theme is found heavily within Austen who constantly plays up the idea of intelligence as beauty. Reading novels can bring suitors, it should not be placed wholly on a woman’s face to capture a suitor. And yet nearly every character is at one point or another described as pretty, plain or ugly. Sisters are prettier than or uglier than each other and looks come and go. Anne seems unable to escape it, running into Wentworth when she is most vulnerable and without her bloom. And at her best when Wentworth is not yet a captain and with little to give, one of Anne’s most important things she can give is her beauty: “Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him…” (Austen 31) It may conceivably have been her beauty that permitted her to turn down his proposal. Having just had her birth rights or intelligence, Anne might have responded more kindly to a man offering marriage.