Examples of movies (1)

The following list of movies are engaging in a realistic approach to educate others the experience of mental illness and does not disdain or portray those with mental illnesses in a negative manner. The first I have selected is; Girl Interrupted (1990), which entirely focuses on women with mental illnesses. This is essential because throughout history, mentally ill women have been rejected and ridiculed for being “hysterical”.

It was actually the official diagnosis for women; psychiatrists would even treat women by masturbating them to orgasm, which is how the creation of vibrators took place. Although this film is based on that time period of hyper-sexualisation, it is refreshing to see Susanna (Winona Ryder)’s hyper-sexuality as a symptom of her borderline personality disorder instead of being there for the sole purpose of arousing viewers.

Girl Interrupted (1990): This film is surrounded by two main female leads and many other secondary female leads. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder that she, herself, discovers with time. At the beginning of the film, she tries to combine alcohol with pills and almost kills herself. During the entire film, the audiences alongside Susanna are not sure if she is truly suffering from an illness or not. She tells the shrink that her overdose was not a suicide attempt as sometimes one puts themselves in a reckless position, just to silence the voices in their head. Now this character is a representation of many women who have ever felt unclear about what is going inside their minds, in regarding either a rough childhood in general or suffering from a mental illness.
Lisa (Angelina Jolie) is diagnosed as a sociopath. She is a chronic inhabitant at the institute and has tried to escape multiple times. She is shown to be quite manipulative and has rebellious tendencies. Lisa isn’t being villainized without a purpose; it is shown quite evidently that she chooses to not get help for her illness and she, herself, becomes the reason for her life falling apart. On numerous events during the movie, it’s evident that Lisa is a kind human who’s just lost in her illness.