Susanna's Mental Disorders: An Analysis

Helen has reported that she has mood swing and that she has suicidal ideation as well having feeling uncontrollable over her own body. She denies and audio or visual hallucinations. Helen is showing signs of bipolar disorder DSM 296.62.

Why doesn’t Millie believe she is mentally ill? Is having a diagnosis of schizophrenia helpful?

82)This emphasizes the book’s point of saying that some criteria are “abnormally increased activity or energy,” and “flight of ideas or subjective impression that thoughts are racing,” (Kring et al. 2016, p. 140). She mentions that during these episodes that her friends would tell her to slow down (Jamison 1995, p. 37). This can also be considered as the symptom characterized by unusual talkativeness and rapid speech (Kring et al. 2016, p. 140). According to the textbook, a decreased need for sleep also characterizes mania, which Jamison often refers to, saying that “Decreased sleep is both a symptom of mania and a cause,” (Jamison 1995, p. 69). During her manic episodes, Jamison also had a tendency to dress provocatively and overspend money, which the DSM-5 characterizes as “excessive involvement in activities that are likely to have painful consequences, such as reckless spending, sexual indiscretions, or unwise business investments,” (Kring et al. 2016, p. 140). She also mentions that during one of her manias, she bought snakebite kits because “God had chose me, and apparently only me, to alert the world to the wild proliferation of killer snakes in the Promised Land,” (Jamison 1995, p. 76), which can be classified as the DSM-5 criteria “increased self-esteem; belief that one has special talents, powers, or abilities,” (Kring et al. 2016, p. 140). As for her depressive

history of mental illness leading to disordered thinking. She would struggle with this illness that

Throughout the first few chapters of the novel, she seems perfectly sane. She's an older Hispanic mother living in poverty trying to keep herself alive. She treated her niece, Dolly, as her own daughter and tried to protect her from her pimp who was also her boyfriend. She appears completely sane until she begins to see visions of people

Susanna Kayson is a character in the film Girl, interrupted that has borderline personality disorder (BPD) (Wick, Konrad, & Mangold, 1999). As Susanna Kayson meets 5 of the 9 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 criteria, Susanna can be diagnosed with BPD. According to criteria 1, Susanna often restrains from stating her true feelings about a situation or a person to maintain relationships. Lisa, a resident of the psychiatric ward, would tease or humiliate Daisy, eventually leading her to commit suicide. Susanna knew that Lisa’s actions were inappropriate but she did not stand up for Daisy. This is an example of criteria 1 (Barlow, Durand, Stewart, & Lalumiere, 2015). One day when Susanna’s boyfriend Toby came to visit, they are caught in the middle of a sexual act and decide to escape to the grounds. Toby said he wanted to be with her, and she stated that she had no inclination to be with him. This is an example of criteria 2. Susanna tries to commit suicide by consuming a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka, and later also stated that she understands what it feels like to not want to be alive. This is an example of criteria 5. When the wife of a man who Susanna had an affair with confronts her, she begins to laugh. This is an example of criteria 6. Lastly, Susanna’s inability to understand her disorder causes her to have bouts of intense anger, which satisfies criteria 8 (Barlow et al., 2015).

In the TV series “Shameless,” Joan Cusack plays the character Sheila Jackson the role that portrayals someone suffering to overcome agoraphobia. Shelia Jackson shows several symptoms that led to believe she could be diagnosed with many different disorders such as: agoraphobia; panic disorder, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and paraphilia’s disorder. Shelia Jackson is a middle- aged Caucasian woman who lives in Chicago with her clown- obsessed husband, Eddie and rebellious daughter, Karen. Shelia spends her days isolated from the rest of the world, cooking, cleaning and having as much sex as possible. Even the thought of leaving her house left Shelia in a panic.

The movie, Girl, Interrupted, displays Susanna Kaysen’s eighteen-month stay at a mental institute in the 1960s. This film was an adaptation of a book based on a true story of the main character and author Susanna Kaysen. Susanna was checked into Claymore, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, after chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. At first, Susanna denies this blatant attempt at suicide and constantly struggles with uncertainty of her thoughts and emotions. Although Girl, Interrupted exhibits several mental disorders one of the most prevalent disorder of this film is Susanna’s Borderline Personality Disorder. This film depicts majority of the signs and symptoms of a person with Borderline Personality. As stated in the textbook, “the lives of persons with borderline personality are marked by instability. Their relationships are unstable, their behavior is unstable, their emotions are unstable, and even their images of themselves are unstable” (Larsen and Buss 593). Susanna’s romantic relationships are extremely unstable and she frequently engages in casual sex. She jumps from one guy to another in a matter of few weeks. One scene that establishes this the most is when her boyfriend at the time comes to visit her at Claymore and expresses his true feelings for her and she instantly withdraws. He asked her to go to Canada with him and she turns him down immediately. She also kisses Lisa who she befriends at the mental institute, displaying a switch of

This is obviously a sign of bad mental health, but there were several incidents that led up to this state of mind. An often occurrence were the fights between her and her husband. She didn’t agree with his ethics and motivations to grow human organs such as kidneys, brain tissue, and livers inside pigoons. “The goal of the pigoon project was to grow foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig” (Atwood 22). This was an issue that may have caused Jimmy’s mother to be neglectful towards her son was her depression. Depression is a mental illness that affected her everyday life. She was so exhausted with the fights with her husband and the depression on top of that. This caused her to be uninterested in her son and it is also what caused her to run away with Jimmy’s pet. This shows that mental illness isn’t always caused by something, but rather someone is born with it. People with depression always have it, but it can be triggered to where it affects their everyday lives. Jimmy’s mother’s depression may have been triggered by stress about her husband’s job and constant arguing with her husband. Either way, whether it is ones chemical make-up or something that causes it, mental health really does affect the way people live their lives.

One personality disorder Joan Crawford demonstrated was bipolar. This disorder can be defined as periods of reckless behavior and hyperactivity that can change at any given second (Rathus, 2010). There are several occasions throughout the movie that show Joan suffering through this disorder, for example one moment she would be a cheerful, smiling mom and at a drop of a hat, it would change for the worst making her become an angry and aggressive toward her child Christina. This can be seen when Joan is kissing her sweet daughter Christina goodnight, and then looks through the closet where she finds a dress hung by a wire hanger. Joan’s behavior quickly becomes elevated, ripping all of the clothes and hangers out of the closet, yelling at Christina, which then leads Joan to beat her daughter with the hanger. Another example is in the scene

When Susannah told her mother, Rhona, that she self-diagnosed herself to be manic-depressive, both her mother and brother, James, immediately rejected the possibility. During Rhona and James’s phone call, James mention Susannah was very capable of handling stress. He stated, “That’s just not Susannah” and “Bipolar doesn’t make any sense to me” (p.53). The pattern of rejecting mental illness as a possible outcome seems to be a common response throughout the book. When Susannah confessed to her

In the movie Mommie Dearest Joan Crawford shows many different types of personality disorders. Personality disorders are a deeply engrained or maladaptive pattern of behavior of a specified kind, typically they occur by the time one reaches adolescents and causes difficulty in personal relationships or society. Studying these psychological disorders can help us to identify and properly treat these abnormal functions that we acquire as we grow older. One way to learn how to identify these disorders is through movie analysis. When you are able to recognize these disorders through a movie they stick out in the real world much more. The disorders that I analyzed that Joan Crawford had were, Bipolar, Borderline, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Narcissism.

In many books, the people without a firm grasp on reality are the ones that can teach the most about the world. Mrs. Dalloway is no exception to that with the character Septimus Warren Smith. Septimus does not think the two doctors treating him are really helping him, but instead, he sees them as his judge. In flashbacks, Dr. Holmes is introduced, making it clear what he, the general practitioner, thinks of mental illness. Instead of helping, Dr. Holmes' diagnoses and treatment adds strain to the relationship between Lucrezia and Septimus.

This particular lady most likely had an abnormality in her brain or her brain chemistry. Several dysfunctional genes, possibly a mutation, are combined which cause her abnormal actions and reactions to her life situations (Comer, 2016). She also could have had a viral infection that caused abnormal brain structure. I have also read at work that there was a study done on people who had mental health issues like schizophrenia. Hundreds of the study participants were born in the winter when it is cold and exposure to viruses are higher, so this is also certainly a possibility of what the problem could

Looking at the symptoms such as anxiety attacks, overeating, fear of accomplishment, fear of abandonment, and so forth—can be interpreted as outward manifestations of unconscious conflicts that have their origins in childhood experiences and defensive reaction to these experiences that are necessary to her as a child.