Life Changing Themes In Girl, Interrupted By Susanna Kaysen

The Waiting Room incorporates the observational mode trait of long takes to illustrate the chaos that occurs in the waiting room and behind the scenes of the hospital. Moreover, the long takes in the film provide a glimpse of each patients’ background story and allows people to express their concerns instead of revealing character individuality, which may help the viewer infer why the health care system in America is failing. The long takes help decipher, “The body language, and eye contact, the intonation and tone of the voices, the pauses and “empty” time that gives the encounter the sense of concrete, lived reality” (Nicholas 176), that depicts each patients’ harsh reality of what it is like living with no health insurance. For example, there is a scene where a little girl and her mom follow a nurse into a room, the camera follows them and the viewer can see the

Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.

The film Girl, Interrupted focused on an eighteen year old girl by the name Susanna that was admitted into a private mental hospital after being accused of a suicidal attempt. The movie follows Susanna on her journey in the institution as she encounters women with different admittance stories. The one who intrigues Susanna the most is Lisa. Lisa is thought to be a sociopath with the way she manipulates those around her to get her way. She is constantly in and out of the institution causing those around to fear, yet admire her. My main focus will be on Lisa and although it was not specified in the film just how old she is, she seemed to be around the same age group as Susanna. This means that, according to Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages, she is on stage five or six. Stage five happens during adolescence where ones primary task is their identity versus their own role in society whereas stage six happens in young adulthood and one faces intimacy versus isolation. The article incorporated gives more insight on how Erikson’s stages play hand in hand with one another and can potentially affect the mental state of someone if not successfully fulfilled. There is also a possibility that, with the ‘symptoms’ of a sociopath, Lisa could have had past problems during what Sigmund Freud considered the anal stage of her childhood.

The film’s key subject throughout the film was how all of the patients had led sane lives up until the point in which they suffered a mental health crisis. After their crises, they were not able to get out of the system. Their cries, pleas, and screams were not always heard. Many were simply treated with medication forcing them to be permanently institutionalized. I believe that the film’s overall purpose was to increase awareness on the difficulties of treating mental illnesses, not just for the patients, but also for everyone involved. It shows the chaos of the emergency room as patient, physicians, and psychiatrists struggle with mental illness.

In the video, “The New Asylums”, it demonstrated how deinstitutionalization has left thousands of mentally ill patients in the hands of the prison system. As the mental health hospitals closed down, the police department and prison system has become responsible for the mentally ill people that are on the streets. There was a firm point made about the release of mentally ill patients- “When hundreds of thousands of mentally ill are released, they do not magically become healthy. They went to the streets, became homeless, and turned to a system that cannot say no.” The video also stated that today, there are nearly 500,000 mentally ill people being held in jails and prisons throughout the country. Furthermore, there was no safety net for those

The film “Girl, Interrupted” is a true story adapted from the original memoir by Susanna Kaysen. Set in the 1960s, it relates her experiences during her stay in a mental institution after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder following a suicide attempt. Many films include characters with a mental illness; the actors who play these characters have the immense challenge of staying true to the illness they portray.

and chicken. Every morning she would drum the nurse's station for her Colace or Ex-Lax

Mental Illness is a condition that needs to be treated and carefully watched. In the instance of something happening to one of the patients, the first action would be to get a specialist from the hospital. Removing these patients from the hospital is also prolonging the problem, whereas they can be in the hospital to give specialist time study them and to apply theories they learnt while obtaining their education level. Is this the government’s way of saying that these people do not matter and that they can store them in communities to make room in the hospital for normal people with easier treatable

“Girl” is a short story in which the author, Jamaica Kincaid, unofficially presents the stereotypes of girls in the mid 1900s. Kincaid includes two major characters in the story “Girl”, they are the mother and the girl. Although the daughter only asks two questions in this story, she is the major character. The mother feels like her daughter is going in the wrong direction and not making the best decisions in her life. The whole story is basically the mother telling her daughter what affects her decisions will have in the future. The mother believes that because her daughter isn’t sitting, talking, cleaning, walking or singing correctly it will lead her to a path of destruction. “Girl” is a reflection of female sexuality, the power of family, and how family can help overcome future dangers.

As soon as McMurphy arrives on the ward, he challenges Nurse Ratched’s abusive regime in hopes of restoring humanity and the rights of the individual. It didn’t take long

Girl, Interrupted provides an in-depth look into Susanna Kaysen’s experience of living with a mental illness and staying in a mental hospital. Twenty-five years after she leaves McLean she learns of her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and discusses it in her memoir. Kaysen reads about her disorder from the DSM-III-R and views her diagnosis as:

In the next stanza, the poet describes “A figure walking towards cloaked in blue/ Beeping/ Tubes/ Needles.” The poem addresses the routinely and monotonous aspect of being in the hospital for long periods of time. It is a critique of the biomedical model and how the hospital system is created where patients are tended to by multiple doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals. The patients and healthcare professionals are unable to form a relationship that consists of what Kleinman describes as “empathetic witnessing” (Kleinman). Therefore, detachment between patient and health workers is developed and established, to which the patient cannot recognize or know the people assisting them. In addition, Grealy discusses this in her earliest accounts and appointments with doctors. She states that there is a layer of “condescension” and is an “endemic in the medical

The doctor then stands up and heads towards the window, now facing the light. The nurse now becomes a metaphor for society and how most people think, and him turning her back towards her and facing the light shows him beginning to turn his back on society and starting to question and reject it, thus becoming enlightened. Every time the doctor starts to critically think out loud, the camera goes from a medium shot to a medium close up of the back of his head. He then begins to talk about how he sees Janet's "real face" or her actual self. This scene was after Janet broke down to the doctor, questioning who says what is attractive and normal, and saying a powerful quote "This state is not God." This clearly affected the doctor and got him thinking and realizing that she is a human being. Earlier in this scene, the nurse refers to Janet as "Patient 307" rather than her own name. This shows how society can easily dehumanize people when we do not deem them functioning members of society, for there is nothing more demeaning then being referred to as a number as we have seen in terrible times such as the Holocaust referring to the concentration camp members. The nurse, remaining in the dark, says "It's easier for me to think of her as human when her face is covered up".

The author’s topic is about a teenager name Susanna Kaysen. At 18 she voluntarily turned herself into McLean Hospital.

Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl Interrupted,” is an autobiography in relation to Kaysen’s two-year stay at a mental hospital as she battles borderline personality disorder. Although in denial, Susanna Kaysen is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder but is unable to come to terms with her illness as she reassures herself she is fine. The reader learns that Kaysen is an unreliable narrator that is unable to discover the truth behind her illness. Through the exploration of her relationships, actions, and opinions, enhances the fact that Kaysen is mentally ill. Through her past and present relationship’s, Susanna demonstrates her self-destructive tendencies. Kaysen’s impulsivity in the novel is another indication that her diagnosis is fitting. Finally, Kaysen’s thought process and anxious behavior further prove her as a candidate for BPD.