Girl, Interrupted: On Coming to Terms with Mental Illness

Trisha Malhotra

Based on a memoir by writer Susanna Kaysen, "Girl, Interrupted (1999)" speaks volumes about her struggle to accept her own mental illness in a society that severely delineated the 'normal' from the 'deviant'. Susanna (Winona Ryder) is admitted to a mental hospital 'McLean' following a suicide attempt where she encounters a pathological liar, a paranoid schizophrenic, an extreme bulimic and a charming sociopath (Angelina Jolie) among others. Being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Susanna's stay is forcibly extended from a few weeks to 18 months. 

Mental hospitals, even in the 20th century, were notorious for poor living conditions, a lack of hygiene, the ill-treatment and abuse of their patients and overcrowding. Many of these problems were well-depicted in the film: patients were pushed around by the McLean staff if they 'misbehaved' which included their benevolent refusal to shower or eat their meals. In addition to this, some girls were denied their prescribed medication and given replacements instead since the hospital was 'cutting costs'. 

Another issue with mental hospitals in the mid-20th century was the lack of any incorporation of out-patient care through deinstitutionalization programs. The demand for deinstitutionalisation only came to the forefront in Western countries in the 1960's. However, it would not be implemented for a few more decades in long-standing hospitals like McLean where Kaysen was admitted. Without deinstitutionalisation, patients who are newly released are suddenly without any assistance and find themselves feeling helpless. They must fend for themselves- find a house, get a job with a decent salary and reintegrate themselves into a community; a combination stressful enough to cause relapses.

One of the characters in the film, Daisy, is released from her admittance to McLean. However, the girls soon learn that Daisy has committed suicide due to her isolation and inability to cope outside the hospital. This problem highlights how deinstitutionalisation -or what is known as rehabilitation today- is essential for the patient's readjustment to the outside world. Jolie's character, the sociopath Lisa, has taken the opposite approach by getting comfortable at McLean. She believes a better life can be lead by the care within the hospital as opposed to the lonliness outside it. Lisa's behaviour depicts the implications of no patient out-treatment since it served as a counterproductive motivator for the patients to remain as permanent admittees.

Most importantly, the film blurs the lines between sanity and insanity. Towards, the end of her stay, after many relapses into self-harming, Susanna becomes convinced that sanity is a social-construct for individuals lucky enough to be healthy to differentiate themselves from those dubbed as 'insane'. This argument was integral to the surge of psychiatric reform movements throughout the middle of the 20th century. These movements were embodied in the Quakers at Philadelphia State Hospital who brought to light the prevailing malpractices of the authoritarian psychiatric hierarchy in the 1940's.

Thorazine, the first antipsychotic drug, had only been synthesised in France in the 1950's; 10 years before from when the movie was set. In 1954, the antipsychotic reserpine was first used in New York by American psychiatrist Nathan S. Klien. These drugs had an immense impact on patient care. In his book, 'Ten Years that Changed the Face of Mental Illness' (1999), Jean Thuiller writes, for the reasons mentioned above, "between 1955 and 1968, the residential psychiatric population in the United States dropped by 30 per cent." This was seen in the film through the successful discharge of almost all other girls Kaysen befriended including the childlike schizophrenic, Georgina.

Once Susanna is released, her writing begins to reflect on her stay at McLean. She started off by downplaying her suicidal symptoms but the film proceeds to unravel the nature of her thoughts to her and their danger to her future. She writes, "My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get it through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition." However, her healing process at Mclean occurred much sooner than the stay warranted. To this day, she believes her mental illness was not serious enough to warrant the extended confinement at McLean.

In conclusion, without the existence of brain scans and other devices, word-of-mouth was the only means of psychiatric diagnosis which, as depicted in the film, lead the industry to a host of problems. Psychiatry was more of the political suppression of individual rights than it was a means to help them heal. Girl, Interrupted masterfully captures these aspects in the form of an introspective diary of a survivor.