Gilbert Grape Mental Illness

This movie takes place in Endora, a small town in Iowa, and it shows us the life of Gilbert Grape, who is 24 years old young man who takes care of his whole family. During the movie, we learned that Gilbert has to deal with some family issues, besides his own, and how he manages his time to do it. First, the movie introduces Arnie, Gilbert’s younger brother, who suffers from autism and it is noticeable that Gilbert looks after him for everything. After that, Gilbert starts talking about the rest of his family, and he mentions that he has two sisters and another brother who went away for college. Then, when he starts talking about his parents, we learned that his dad died and that his mom is an obese woman with depression as consequence of her

husband’s death.

Mrs.

Bonnie Grape suffers from a mood disorder, specifically a major depressive disorder. This condition is known for having constant feelings of sadness and lackness of interest in activities, which eventually lead to other mental and physical symptoms. Some other symptoms that affect a person’s mood are anxiety and discontent feelings of themselves, which affect an individual’s self-esteem by feeling worthless or guilty. Additionally, it affects the individual's body in physical ways by having significant weight gain or weight loss, fatigue, loss or energy, and insomnia (not being able to sleep properly) or hypersomnia (sleeping too much). Furthermore, it affects a person’s cognitive functions, and this can be shown by having lack of concentration, and by being slow to perform activities. A person’s behavior also changes, and they experience symptoms like psychomotor agitation or retardation, excessive crying, and being socially isolated. Finally, having recurrent death and suicidal thoughts can be a depression symptom. In order to be medically diagnosed with a major depressive disorder, a person must experienced or show 5 or more of these symptoms almost every day for more than 2

weeks.
Mrs. Grape obviously displayed most of these symptoms and it ended up affecting her personal life, including her children. Gilbert explains how his mom’s life changed after his dad committed suicide in their house’s basement 17 years ago. He described her as one of the prettiest girls in their town, but after that, she got busy looking after her kids to the point she didn’t left the house. What happened during those years is that she got depressed because of that event and started displaying some symptoms and behaviors that ended up being part of her life's daily routine.

During the movie, one of the most noticeable depression symptoms is weight gain, something that started with anxiety and ended leading Mrs.

Grape to self-esteem problems. Additionally, she lost interest in doing normal activities and she performed the basic ones very slowly to the point that she ended up letting her older children to take care of the youngest ones and herself. This was a serious problem to Mrs. Grape because she got to the point where she didn’t wanted to go upstairs to her bedroom, and ended up eating, sleeping and passing her whole day watching TV, all of this sitting down in her couch. Another reason that she didn’t wanted to leave the house was because she didn’t wanted people to see her and start talking about her, which made her socially isolated. This can be shown almost at the end of the movie when she went to the sheriff’s office to ask them to release Arnie, and after everyone stared at her and make fun of her appearance, she decided not to leave the house during Arnie’s birthday party; she was even ashamed of been presented to Gilbert’s

girlfriend.

She displayed a sad mood during most of the movie, and she was still too sensitive to talk about her husband’s death. Her children tried not to talk about it in front of her, and they also avoided any situation that could remind her weight, like when they had to repair the beams over the basement and they had to do it quietly because they didn’t wanted to bring up any topic related to that space or make her feel bad about her causing damages to the house structure. She also was afraid of any of her children to leave her, because she felt like she was losing someone else all over again, and she told that to Gilbert when he almost ran away during one family fight.
During the movie, there is no sign that Mrs. Grape receive any type of treatment for her depression. The usual treatment for this type of depressive disorder involves a combination of medication and therapy with a psychiatrist. The reason of it, is because talk therapies are focused on changing negative thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and medicines like antidepressants relieve and prevent a person’s mood and anxiety.

The movie actually does a good job portraying depression in Mrs. Bonnie Grape character. They explain the reason behind it and showed how her life changed because of it, and how that ended up affecting her life and her children. It could seemed that she had an anxiety disorder, but she wasn’t showing intense feelings of fear that had no reason; her fear of living the house was due to her appearance, something related to her self-esteem, and all the other symptoms also pointed out that what she had was a case of depressive disorder.