Portrayal of Mental Illness in Film
After up to 2 decades, in a sudden whirlwind, she walked the ground of the Big Wide World which she did not know existed, barefoot. A sheltered young woman coming from a family with a history of mental illnesses ran out of a Mental Health Facility completely disorientated to the world outside of her secluded past, barefoot; with feet that were bare of even papillary ridges known to some of us as unique, individualistic ‘DNA footprints’.
In the Movie “Barefoot”, Daisy (Evan Rachel Wood) was admitted into a mental Health Facility under the pretence that she was Schizophrenic. They believed that her disturbed thought processes and perceptual difficulties were used as the murder weapon, in the form of voices, at the scene of her mother’s death. Daisy, being raised by a Schizophrenic mother for up to two decades of her life, knew no truth other than that which her mother had fed into her system while growing up. Daisy was not like any normal person while growing up. She did not attend school, socialise with anyone, or even push a trolley at a supermarket. She did not see the real world outside of the world that her mother had created for her – a world polluted with paranoia and negative perceptions like toxic fumes in the atmosphere that diffused into her brain matter, nestling itself at home.
On admission into the Mental Health Institution Daisy was disorientated to time and place, she did not know where she was. She lacked intellectual insight into her mother’s death, despite being free of any Mental Health Illness herself. Due to not interacting with anyone except her Schizophrenic mother- who woke screaming in paranoia and fell asleep with mental pain and anguish- Daisy did not have a chance to develop the skill of critical thinking and complex reasoning. When her mother had died, Daisy believed that by not being there to save her mother from the voices in her mother’s mind it meant that she killed her own mother. Hence, Daisy admitted out loud that she was at the Mental Health Facility for killing her own mother.
With Mental Health Illness/psychosocial disorders, it is imperative that the family of the ill are paid close attention to and that they are taught effective coping strategies. Providing intervention for service users with psychosocial disorders places a heavy obligation on our shoulders. An obligation to ensure that the mental well-being of their family members are intact – Daisy did not know how to survive in the world alone and grew anxious in unfamiliar situations, which buzzed all around here outside of her mentally instable cocoon. As OT’s with knowledge from the foundation phase of Psychology, we know that the way we think has a distinctive link to modelled behaviour. All Daisy ever saw was her mother’s delusional and disorganized behaviour which had a negative impact on her own thought processes and ability to explore the world on her own two feet. Daisy was trapped into thinking that she was a mental patient herself, when all she needed was someone to believe in her and treat her like a normal person – that was enough for the papillary ridges on Daisy’s feet to come to existence.
The thick, heavy air surrounding the families of mentally ill service users is unhealthy. The pollution, however, can be eliminated by environmental awareness (understanding the nature of the condition) and support, in order for them to live a normal life. They need to be educated on the psychosocial condition and its presenting symptoms so that they know what is normal and what deviates from the norm. As OT’s we need to step in and rescue families from believing that they are mentally Unstable due to the unfortunate circumstance their everyday life has become – this earned Daisy her discharge from the mental Health Facility and a free ticket into the Big Wide World with newly purchased shoes that sat firm against her unique DNA footprint.