Mona’s Mental Illness (and some psych info)
Okay, so watching 7x19 for the first time in a while has made me realize how inaccurately Mona’s mental health crisis was portrayed (wow big shock I know). I was a psych minor in college so it’s not like I’m some psychological expert, but I know enough about dissociation and related disorders to know that whatever they were trying to portray was not well done.
So it seems pretty obvious that what they were trying to convey was that Mona had dissociated into some sort of other personality state, like what is seen in people with dissociative identity disorder (or what used to be called multiple personality disorder). She starts dressing and acting like her fifteen year old self, and experiencing delusions that she’s back in the bell tower the night Charlotte died, which takes her out of the present moment.
First of all, it is not possible that Mona has DID. That disorder ONLY develops in childhood as the result of severe, repeated trauma before the age of around seven to nine. This is because DID involves the personality splitting into individual fragments to cope with the trauma instead of forming into one whole, which happens around that age. As far as we know, Mona did not experience any sort of trauma early in life that would lead to the development of this disorder, and Alison’s bullying occurred far too late in life for DID to be possible. There’s also the fact that in almost every case, DID is marked by frequent episodes of memory loss or amnesia, which did not ever seem to be the case for Mona.
And on top of that, her episode of dissociation, whether it was supposed to be into a whole separate personality or not, in 7x19 makes no sense. The whole point of dissociating is to cope with stress or trauma by distancing yourself from it mentally. Spencer explains that Mona has reverted back to her 15 year old self because it’s a “safe place” where the only thing she had to worry about was Alison’s bullying. And yet just before that, Mona had recounted every minute detail about her confrontation with Charlotte in the bell tower, and goes on to describe at length how Charlotte ended up dead. If Mona had really dissociated into some sort of separate personality or mental state, it would have been to protect herself from the memory of that night. But considering she was able to recall it in perfect detail, and didn’t even seem overly distressed while doing so...what was even the point of her supposed dissociation?
The only explanation I can really think of is that up until that night, Mona had repressed the memory of killing Charlotte completely - this lines up with her apparent obliviousness while Hanna was kidnapped. When she got addicted to the game again, her mental faculties began to break down, and the memory was dislodged. In order to cope with the trauma suddenly coming back to her, she dissociated into a mental state - her teenage self - where she felt secure enough to properly process the memory. This is a bit odd, considering Mona’s characterization back then was marked by her insecurities, but I suppose it was the last period of her life that wasn’t tainted by carrying massive secrets and lies already.
I won’t lie, I’ve always loved 7x19 because it was so interesting to see all of Mona’s long-standing mental health issues sort of come to a head so dramatically, but looking back, her whole breakdown makes very little sense without some major interpretation.
