A factual, objective summary of the book: Traci Foust’s book, Nowhere Near Normal, discuses how her life was affected by mental health disorders as she was growing up. The main issue that Foust struggled with was obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which stemmed off of anxiety and possibly caused depression. She started developing the signs of OCD around the age of eight. The main problems she encountered with the disorder focused on odd and even numbers, the transfer of microbes and diseases, and worrying about harming others. Foust’s dislike of odd numbers leads to very poor performances in math classes, but she was able to excel in English, reading, writing, and theater, where she was able to find a creative outlet. The fear of the spread …show more content…
It was a stressful situation for Foust’s parents, grandmother, sister, and brother to deal with. The stress of the situation may have lead to her parents’ divorce and her father leaving. There were many fights within the family because no one really understood why Foust was the way she was and they just did not know how to handle all of the issues associated with the disorder. Foust’s mother ended up making her see a couple therapists. The first one just created a place for her to talk, but the second one finally said that OCD was the primary cause of the problems. Foust was finally able to find out that she was not alone in her thoughts and that other people experienced these things as well. Cognitive therapy was the treatment plan that was really focused on. As she got older, the issues seemed to escalade, leading to a short stint as a runaway, an addiction to Nyquil to help with insomnia and numbing her thoughts, and the start of prescription drugs. She had a rough time coping with the mental health disorders in her late teens, but she started to understand how her mind worked little by …show more content…
People have not always had the same understanding of what a mental illness is and what it entails. Even today, people are still learning about different mental illnesses, including what causes them, effective treatment, how they can be prevented, and what they actually to the individuals mind or thought process. In the past, mental illness has been treated with little, to no compassion because of the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of what was actually happening. The mentally ill may have been tortured, locked up for life, or even killed. These problems were not viewed as a medical issue, because people believed that these ill people had full control over their actions and that they just chose to act as they did. As time has passed and knowledge has been gained, there have been advances in how mental illness is looked at and treated. Even though the stigma placed on mental illness has improved, there are still quite a few people and cultures that look down on the recognition and treatment of mental health
Restricted, a book on mental health by Jennifer Kinsel takes on a first-person, speculative, storytelling format about the author's long battle with various eating disorders as a teen. She recounts how she formed a shameful opinion of herself and how she saw herself in the mirror, subsequent to her low self-esteem by comparing herself to others. This compelling story quickly escalates to describe the spiralling effects of her detrimental obsession. Everything following her downfall makes up the bulk of the book, which is her recollection of the series of steps she had to take toward the pinnacle of recovery. This includes her relapses.
Mademoiselle F, as she is known, was an eighteen year old girl who frequently visited her affluent and elderly aunt. One time when she was visiting she was gripped by the sudden fear that she had taken something from the house without her aunt’s permission. At first, she tried to not wear her apron so that she would not have pockets to stick things in, but soon she became afraid that she was putting possessions in her shoes, hair, and hands. Mademoiselle F began a vigorous ritual of shaking out her shoes, thoroughly combing her hair, undressing and redressing, shaking out her hands, and then forcing her chambermaid to check Mademoiselle for her, just to be safe. This vigorous process exhausted her, and she soon brought herself to French psychiatrist J.E.D. Esquirol, who wrote down her case for us to read today.
After watching Alyse Shacter speak about obsessive compulsion disorder (OCD), there were a few things that did surprise me. To begin with, I was surprised that her classmates were extremely helpful with her OCD and offering to carry her to class so she wouldn’t miss class. Even though her parents were the ones that spoke to the class about Alyse ’s
Humans are very susceptible to qualities inside themselves. For example, a personality disorder is defined as “patterns of inflexible traits that disrupt social life or work and may distress the affected individual” (Rathus, 2010, p. 525). These traits may be highlighted in a person’s life and are a part of their personality. In addition, personality disorders effect your thoughts and behaviors. The academy award winning film Mommie Dearest, directed by Frank Perry, accurately portrays how the aspects of obsessive-compulsive disorder and histrionic personality disorders can affect someone’s everyday life.
Black Swan isn’t your typical ballet movie where the girl gets the main lead. It is an incredibly macabre tale about the dangers of perfectionism and distorted body image. It also has cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, dissociative identity disorder, eating disorder, delusional disorder. The main girl Nina, struggles with her dual role as the White Swan and the black swan. She is not as young as the other girls, so she learns how to fake movements that have meaning since she has been dancing for multiple years.
Conceptualization Paper: Bipolar Disorder Mental illness is a common occurrence among people in today’s society. Mental illness does not discriminate. People of all shapes and sizes, race, age, social standing, and socioeconomic status can be diagnosed with a mental illness. According to National Alliance on Mental Illness, “1 in 5 adults experience a mental health condition every year. Also, 1 in 20 lives with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder.
When people hear the words, “mental illness,” they think of insane asylums and psychiatric wards, but that’s not necessarily the case. Yes, back in the 1800’s they did have asylums for people with mental disorders. But that was when doctors didn’t fully understand mental illnesses and disorders. But currently, doctors are able to comprehend illnesses and disorders.
The representation of psychological disorders is observed in the character of Joan Crawford. A psychological disorder, as defined by Myers (2008), is a “significant dysfunction in an individual’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. For example, Joan carries a few psychological disorders including borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. First and foremost, when waking up one morning, Joan obsessively washes her hands, face, and arms before she even gets into the shower. She also became upset with her maid when she missed a spot of dirt under the plant, along with forcefully making Christina clean the already clean bathroom floor.
Mental Illness affects an immense amount of individuals no matter their race, culture or age. It is everywhere we go, yet still an issue some choose to ignore; whether it is the person facing the illness or those around them. People handle their sickness in a variety of ways. Some by using violence as their only answer, others run away from their issue and majority choose to accept and make the best of it. After reading the novel The Secret Life of Bees, it would be easy to think that the main theme is discrimination or family, but in reality it is actually focused on the toll that mental illness takes on a family.
In his essay “A Plague of Tics”, David Sedaris recounts the compulsions he suffered from for much of his youth, beginning in 3rd grade when his family moved from New York to North Carolina, and lasting through college, until he took up smoking as a more socially acceptable habit to replace his previous, more “inappropriate” habits, such as licking light switches and rolling his eyes back. At the time the essay takes place, the early 1960s, there was not much public knowledge of mental illness, but to a modern reader it is clear that the experiences Sedaris describes are very telling of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Mental health is often considered a difficult to approach, even taboo topic, but Sedaris breaks this barrier easily through
“ I think one thing is that anybody who's had to contend with mental illness, whether it's depression, bipolar illness, or severe anxiety, whatever actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering”. ( Kay Redfield Jamison, 2016). In other words, anyone who has to deal with any type of psychological disorders has the capacity to get back to normal because they have been through other life situations that they have overcome before. A psychological disorder can be defined as a disorder that causes a person’s behaviour, emotion and thoughts to be in suffering. Therefore, the emphasis of this paper will be on a psychological disorder called schizophrenia, depicted in the movie known as out of darkness.
Hello everyone, One of the main themes in this chapter is "self-injurious behavior," which fascinated me the most. I 've grown up in a small town where my neighbor 's daughter used to engage in self-destructive behavior. I thought her behavior was unusual. If I asked why, she gave me vague answers like, "I don 't know" or "because I like it. " People who knew her usually dismissed her an insane woman.
With brows frowning as intensely as possible, I sat still and listened as the doctor concluded, "You have ADHD, and it can only be eased, but not completely cured. " Layers upon layers of intense emotions stirred inside me as I sprinted out from the hospital. Anger and despair struck me as the words, “I will never be cured”, echoed in my mind. Enduring this arduous sentence, I isolated myself from the rest of the world. A once jovial kid with endless dreams suddenly transformed into a child with a hollow shell.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects the way an individual feels, behaves, and thinks. Among the symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations, delusions, negative emotions, and disorganization of thoughts. Furthermore, the causes of schizophrenia may come from various factors such as, genetics, brain chemistry, substance use, and even malnutrition before birth. In the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, we find a mathematician and founder of game theory by the name of John Nash.
He began experimenting with a number of methods that would help the patient bring forth memories from the unconscious. After numerous methods he found a technique that worked. The patients would be free to discuss their thoughts wherever it lead them. Sigmund called this technique “free association” which eventually became his main treatment for hysteria. Other physicians in the day discounted dreams but Freud felt that even the dreams of his patients were important.