Girl Interrupted by Donnie Darko Girl Interrupted

¶ … Girl Interrupted by Donnie Darko

Girl interrupted

Girl Interrupted is a movie with the physical location being in a psychiatric facility and the time location dated back to the 1960s. Suzanna, the main character is brought into the facility following spirited efforts by her parents to convince her through a family friend that she needs help to get through her psychiatric problems and that she would be in a better position to receive this help from a psychiatric hospital.

Susanna reports to the hospital and she is seen to be shocked by the new environment with psychiatric patients, she feels out of place. Susanna is scared of Lisa in particular, a sociopath feared by many other patients, however, with time Suzanna gets used to Lisa. There are other significant people to the plot of the movie that Susanna meets at the hospital, Georgina who is portrayed as a pathological liar, Polly, a fire accident victim and Daisy, a lady with eating disorder combined with a personality disorder since she is unable to eat in the presence of other people. The initial reaction of Susanna is that she does not belong to such an institution with many psychiatric patients, however, she late gets accustomed to the place and feels part of the institution to an extent that she refuses to sneak away wit the boyfriend who comes to take her away and says she belongs to the hospital and not the outside world.

Mental health disorders depicted

Susanna and Lisa are the main characters used by the director of the film to bring out the psychological disorders to the viewers. Susanna is used by the director to bring out the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and its symptoms and signs in the movie. The following are the signs that point at a person with BPD as depicted by Medicine Net, (2012):

The person with BPD seems to have emotional swings such that at one point the person may be upbeat and happy at one point then suddenly dips into feeling of despair at the next point. Such people are also known to display feelings of emptiness and anger during their times of despair. These signs are clearly seen in Susanna within the hospital, she would interact positively with Nurse Valerie at one point, even throughout a day and suddenly draw back to herself at the next moment or the following day such that the nurse had to force her to even wake up.

People with BPD are generally seen to have challenges in maintaining relationships hence will be involved in multiple relationships or even relationships that are considered inappropriate. Susanna is seen to display such characteristics when she doesn't consider sleeping with multiple men immoral or promiscuous, Susanna slept with a husband of her parents' friend and even that she felt it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Individuals with BPD will often perceive themselves variably depending on the person they are with and generally having a very unstable sense of identity. This was predominantly the case with Susanna since at several incidences she displayed the feeling of belonging and comfort within the hospital when she was with other patients and with her boyfriend as well, but display directly the opposite feeling when she was with the nurses and the psychiatrists that were attending to her. She never had a stable standing of where she belonged or how she perceived herself as an individual, it was a harsh time for her since she repeatedly displayed double personality.

BPD patients are also known to be prone to risks that may be fatal yet unnecessary. They are not able to perceive the consequences of their actions prior to making the decision to go ahead and execute their actions. Susanna is displayed to accept to sneak into the administration office to break into the confidential cabinets and shelves, destroying the documents. Susanna is also seen to take the risk of sneaking out of the facility to go to have nice time in the night clubs and further proceed to Daisy's home, all these without the worry of the consequences that may befall her if the administration got wind of it which would include punishments or even prolonging of the time she will spend in the hospital.

The BPD patients are also seen to be susceptible to activities that could endanger themselves or inflict pain to themselves like making cuts into their bodies, pulling their hair, drugging themselves and such like risky activities. During one of her down times, Susanna shocked everyone by swallowing a whole bottle of aspirin using vodka which is known to be lethal and was a suicide attempt.

The BPD patients are also known to fear rejection or being abandoned especially by people they feel should care for them. Susanna felt rejected and alone when it was clear that she had to go to the psychiatric facility. BPD victims are also known to be delusional in the way they perceive things, for instance Susanna believed that there was something in her head, she also had her own way of defining words that she believed were true. Bipolar victims also have the constant hallucinations as was the case with Susanna as she constantly fell back in her mind to the lifestyle she once lived as well as the episodes that happened several days or years ago at the time she is at the psychiatric facility.

One of the central societal attitudes that the movie portrays is the feeling that the people with psychiatric problems do not belong to the society but to the psychiatric facilities since they cannot reason like the normal people and have no capacity to react to social life or even long for the normal social life. This is not necessarily true since Susanna portrayed the longing for a normal life even when she was in the mental facility and that is why she sneaked out to get a taste of the social life outside the hospital.