1. What constitutes a “normal person”?
A “normal person” can be considered many different things, depending on the viewpoint of the person. Often times one would consider a “normal person” to be a person without any sort of mental illness. A normal person is someone who adapts to the norms and standards of society.
In this documentary about Millie, her daughters grew up thinking that their mother was a “normal person,” and that how she made them feel was “normal.” They didn’t know any other type of relationship between a mother and her daughters, so they never thought to tell anyone about what went on in their household.
2. How does mental illness affect a family?
In this documentary, it was clear that Millie’s mental illness took a toll on her family’s dynamic. Millie was not diagnosed with a mental disorder until much later on in her life. At that point, her family was already destroyed. Millie and her husband went through a divorce. The two daughters were left to live with their mother. The girls did not know any other way of life, so they thought the lives they lived with their mother were just like lives other children had with their parents.
The older daughter knew that something was not right with their mother. Often times she was scared. She took over taking care of her younger sister. At around the age of 12, the older daughter built up the courage to leave her mother’s home and move in with her father. She thought her younger sister would be okay on her own. The younger daughter attempted suicide shortly thereafter. She felt as though her mother drove her to it, and still resents her mother for that to this day. The younger daughter thought as though it was “normal.” She thought that was how all mot...
... middle of paper ...
...as in a stable, long-term facility where Millie could really make progress and form an independent life. I think that this is such an important factor in the treatment and care of a person with a mental illness. If Millie was left alone to deal with her mental illness, she would not have survived. She did not even know that she was mentally ill, so there would have been no way for her to deal with it on her own. The fact that her family took care of her, and was persistent in getting the best treatment for her was the best thing for Millie’s care.
Works Cited
Fortinash, Katherine, Patricia Worret. Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, 5th Edition. Mosby, 2012. VitalBook file.
Smiley, S. (Producer & Director). (2006). Out of the shadow [Motion picture]. (Available from Vine Street Pictures, P.O. Box 662120, Los Angeles, CA 90066. http://www.outoftheshadow.com)
One of her earliest memories came from when she was three years old. Jeannette had to go to the hospital because she burned herself cooking hot dogs. Her parents didn’t like hospitals, so for that reason after a few weeks they came and took her away. Jeannette and her family were constantly moving from place to place, sometimes staying no more than one night somewhere. Her father always lied to them saying that they had to keep moving because he was wanted by the FBI. Jeannette’s mother never took much interest in Jeannette or her siblings, because the mother didn’t want them and thought that they were bothersome and in the way.
The main psychological impacts were self-stigma, increased stress, and depression. Self-stigma occurs when the family members except mental illness stereotypes to be true. When self-stigma occurs caregivers tend to feel embarrassed about the person’s mental illness, feel as though they are looked down on because a family member has a mental illness, and feel the need to be hide it in order to have people continue to treat the family the same (Girma,Dehning, Mueller, Tesfaye, Froeschl, Moller-Leimkuhler , 2014). In the movie the little sister Ellen and primary caregiver Gilbert are the most effected by the self-stigma. The most predominant ...
The mother is a selfish and stubborn woman. Raised a certain way and never falters from it. She neglects help, oppresses education and persuades people to be what she wants or she will cut them out of her life completely. Her own morals out-weight every other family member’s wants and choices. Her influence and discipline brought every member of the family’s future to serious-danger to care to her wants. She is everything a good mother isn’t and is blind with her own morals. Her stubbornness towards change and education caused the families state of desperation. The realization shown through the story is the family would be better off without a mother to anchor them down.
...en-year-old girl”. She has now changed mentally into “someone much older”. The loss of her beloved brother means “nothing [will] ever be the same again, for her, for her family, for her brother”. She is losing her “happy” character, and now has a “viole[nt]” personality, that “[is] new to her”. A child losing its family causes a loss of innocence.
The thought of her brothers still being in her former home environment in Maine hurt her. She tried to think of a way to get at least one of her brothers, the sickly one, to come and be with her. She knew that her extended family was financially able to take in another child, and if she showed responsibility, there would be no problem (Wilson, 40). She found a vacant store, furnished it, and turned it into a school for children (Thinkquest, 5). At the age of seventeen, her grandmother sent her a correspondence, and requested her to come back to Boston with her brother (Thinkquest, 6).
Crowe, M. (2011). Feeling out of control: A qualitative analysis of the impact of bipolar
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
Now both of their mothers weren't the same. One was very strict and wanted everything done by the book and the other had her own trouble. She was dealing with her drug problems and her boyfriend who kept giving
The institutions were known as psychiatric hospitals rather than mental hospitals. Occupational therapists were employed there to help prepare patients for life and work outside the hospitals, short-term patients did better than long-term patients because they hadn’t been away from the rest of the world as long as the long-term patients had been. In the 1950s, people general feared and rejected people with mental illnesses. Mentally ill people were considered psychotic by most people. People believed that the mentally ill were violent and dangerous which is probably why they were feared. Parents of children who were mentally ill wanted to get involved so they started an organization for a Forum school, which was a school for the mentally ill children. Several factors were responsible for this organization: 1.Widespread of children with an IQ of below 50, 2.A lack of community services for retarded people, 3.Long waiting list for admission to institutions, 4.Parental dissatisfaction with the condition of many institutions, 5.Leaders believing mutual assistance could bring benefits for public relations, exchange of information, and political actions, and last 6.The assistance of a few key professionals. The Forum school was established in 1954 and is still active to this day. It was hard for the public to distinguish a mental illness from ordinary unhappiness and worry and
The concept of the asylum was originally meant to be a place of retreat for a sorely troubled individual. Appalled by the treatment of the insane, a woman by the name of Dorothea Dix set out to persuade legislature to establish thirty-two new asylums in several states across the country. This included the monumental government hospital, St. Elizabeth’s, in D.C. Dix believed that the most deranged individuals would recover from their illness if they were treated with kindness and dignity. These hospitals were set apart from the community and were made to provide a place of retreat from busy city life, a place for healing. The hospital grounds were peaceful and relaxing. With this environment and a structured day complete with evening entertainment it was thought that a patient would need only a few months to heal. The first patient arrived at St. Elizabeth’s in 1855. Dorothea Dix once said, “If the person’s insanity was detected soon ...
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
...f the bad that is going on in her real life, so she would have a happy place to live. With the collapse of her happy place her defense was gone and she had no protection from her insanity anymore. This caused all of her blocked out thoughts to swarm her mind and turn her completely insane. When the doctor found her, he tried to go in and help her. When the doctor finally got in he fainted because he had made so many positive changes with her and was utterly distressed when he found out that it was all for naught. This woman had made a safety net within her mind so that she would not have to deal with the reality of being in an insane asylum, but in the end everything failed and it seems that what she had been protecting herself from finally conquered her. She was then forced to succumb to her breakdown and realize that she was in the insane asylum for the long run.
Nancy was only four years old when her grandmother died. Her grandmother had a big lump on the lower right hand side of her back. The doctors removed it, but it was too late. The tumor had already spread throughout her body. Instead of having a lump on her back, she had a long stitched up incision there. She couldn’t move around; Nancy’s parents had to help her go to the bathroom and do all the simple things that she use to do all by herself. Nancy would ask her grandmother to get up to take her younger sister, Linh, and herself outside so they could play. She never got up. A couple of months later, an ambulance came by their house and took their grandmother away. That was the last time Nancy ever saw her alive. She was in the hospital for about a week and a half. Nancy’s parents never took them to see her. One day, Nancy saw her parents crying and she have never seen them cry before. They dropped Linh and her off at one of their friend’s house. Nancy got mad because she thought they were going shopping and didn’t take her with them.
...mans that we are today. Loving and supporting others no matter of your likings is the nature of life. Being violent and showing hate towards others is also part of life, unfortunately. Humans are vulnerable to the world socially and physically. There is no correct answer what actually makes humans normal. Everyone is normal in their own way and no matter what a person do, there will always be others that will judge you and find any way possible to dislike you. That’s why a person needs to be themselves and do what make them happy because nobody is perfect. Humans being humans is what makes life livable and dependable and humans dependable.
“People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of crime than to commit them.”