Can you imagine waking up to the same dream every day? Or dreaming about people you’ve never seen or interacted with? What about seeing the future? Or is it simply time disorientation? The constant feeling of someone harming you and thoughts unable to distinguish reality from fantasy....
The representation of mental illnesses and disorders in the media has always been a popular topic of debate. The question of when can the line between fiction and reality be crossed under the guise of directorial creativity looms over every film or TV show. It is not uncommon for writers to use disorders as a mode of dramatization to further the plot. Some popular tropes are- Psychosis and Schizophrenia. Psychosis disrupts how your brain functions, disengaging from reality. You might experience unreal sights, sounds, or ideas that can be categorized as symptoms, not diseases (Jeanie Lerche Davis, 2015). Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that impairs a person's ability to think rationally, have emotional control, have decision-making, and interact with interpersonal interactions. Psychosis is a symptom of the mental disorder-Schizophrenia (Jeanie Lerche Davis, 2015). Other symptoms are extreme stress levels, a severe lack of sleep, or certain trauma that can trigger psychosis.
One such depiction is Sarah, from the movie ‘Horse Girl’. Sarah, the protagonist is an awkward woman, her main activities are grooming her childhood pony, watching paranormal shows, and being a saleswoman at a local crafts store. Suddenly, Sarah believes that she is a clone of her deceased grandmother, and aliens are capturing her consequence of a string of strange occurrences. She begins to spiral, questioning her ability to trust herself and questioning if she going down the same black hole as her mother and grandmother. Her actions suggest psychosis and schizophrenia.
Sarah’s physical attributes replicate her grandmother, as she wears her grandmother’s orange dress and mirrors her pictures- to me she looks like a clone-these are characteristics transferred through genes. The movie points towards Sarah’s maternal family behaving “weirdly, having a hard time, and her mother committing suicide due to depression overdosage”. This explains the carried trauma and unaddressed concerns. Further solidifying, schizophrenia frequently runs in families, a singular gene cannot be the cause. It's more likely that particular gene combinations increase a person's susceptibility to the illness. Nevertheless, schizophrenia is not a guarantee if you have these genes. (NHS, 2021) Schizophrenia belongs to a group of pathologies known as complex genetic disorders (Gejman et al., 2010).
Sarah is discovered to be sleepwalking, experiencing nosebleeds, and zoning out to the point where she leaves her car and walks home after hearing the sound of water from storage tanks. Sarah is also experiencing time leaps and alien abduction- these are psychotic behaviors. She hallucinates by hearing voices from the future, imagining things like a TV-show character Darren replacing her real life-love interest, and dreaming of a girl she has never seen in her life, who happens to be dressed as her roommate. For individuals experiencing hallucinations, it is very real, and they may be very disturbing for a loved one to see. Both critical and frightening voices may be heard during the delusion. Voices may be from someone the person hearing them knows or doesn't know. Additionally, Sarah couldn’t remember details anymore and stretched on certain aspects like the ‘positive-fabric colour’ extensively. Her cognitive symptoms demonstrate unstructured thinking, unfinished activities, anosognosia (loss of insight), and a lack of awareness of her condition. Symptoms of Psychosis and Schizophrenia overlap (NAMI, 2020).
There are three stages of Schizophrenia- Prodromal, Active, and Residual. Symptoms of all three stages are visible in Sarah, like disorganized thinking, social isolation, wandering, sleeping problems, etc. For purposes of diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) no longer recognizes the residual stage. It is still helpful for describing the signs of schizophrenia. (Washington, 2022)
I believe, awareness of such topics especially medical conditions is of utmost importance. Media is a singular medium that can reach large numbers of people. Alison Brie (Sarah) is the co-writer of ‘Horse Girl’ which is based on her real-life anxieties about her own psychology and her family's history of paranoid schizophrenia and depression. This gives her an inside perspective of the conditions. In terms of direction and setting, it is one of the most accurate movies that embraced the abstractness and void a patient feels and can convey it. The background music, dialogues, and visuals influenced by Sci-fi make the watch frightening but immersive at the same time. Throughout the movie the writers concentrated on smaller elements like the importance of water (her mother's death under a shower due to overdose distracts her thinking entirely, as she forgets her car), time disorientation (in the span of two min she sleeps walks outside her apartment believing 35min and more have passed), and her conversation with the therapist- she believes to have met him already whereas that is not true. Lastly, aliens are coming to take her as she believes to be her own grandmother. All of these are well understood, experienced with anecdotes, and scientifically and then depicted.
References
Cleveland Clinic. (2018). Schizophrenia | Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4568-schizophrenia
Gejman, P. V., Sanders, A. R., & Duan, J. (2010). The Role of Genetics in the Etiology of Schizophrenia. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 33(1), 35–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2009.12.003
Handler, R. (2020, February 7). Alison Brie Based Horse Girl on Her Own Mental Health History. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/alison-brie-based-horse-girl-on-her-mental-health-history.html
Healthline. (2018). Psychosis: Symptoms, Causes, and Risk Factors. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/psychosis
Jeanie Lerche Davis. (2015, December 28). What Is Psychosis? WebMD; WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/guide/what-is-psychosis
NAMI. (2020). What is Schizophrenia? | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness. Nami.org; Nami. https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Schizophrenia
NHS. (2021, February 12). Causes - Schizophrenia. Nhs.uk. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/schizophrenia/causes/#:~:text=Schizophrenia%20tends%20to%20run%20in
Washington, N. (2022, June 30). Stages of schizophrenia: Symptoms, causes, and treatments. Www.medicalnewstoday.com. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/stages-of-schizophrenia#active-stage
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