Swetha Alachi The film industry has had a habit of portraying people with mental illness in ways that create and reinforce stereotypes about them. Silver Linings Playbook seems to be a refreshing change from this trend. Silver Linings Playbook is a 2012 American romantic comedy-drama about Pat Solintano Jr., a man with bipolar disorder who, after ending up in a mental health facility, ends up living with his parents again. During his attempt to get his life back on track and win back his wife, he bonds with Tiffany, a young widow with issues of her own. This movie received a lot of public attention for its portrayal of several mental illness, from Pat Jr’s bipolar disorder, to Tiffany’s undisclosed diagnosis. This paper will look into how these disorders have been portrayed in the film and how they compare with how the symptoms are seen in real life. In the film, Pat shows symptoms of bipolar disorder in several scenes. Pat is seen nearly beating a man, who he had caught ha...

AARYAN SANWAL HOUSE, a critically acclaimed award-winning television series portrays a brilliant but rather unsociable diagnostician named Gregory House. He is the head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine and deals with cases that other doctors and clinicians are unable to diagnose. While undergoing a surgical procedure, an infarction in his right legs’ quadriceps resulted in him having severe pain in his leg and rendered him unable to walk without a stick. To manage the severe and increasing pain, he started taking Vicodin. Over time his tolerance towards the drug started building up and at a certain point in the series, he consumed –Vicodin – pills that were supposed to last a month in less than a week.   This blog post will look at the accuracy of the depiction of opioid dependence and its effects in the show. Gregory House’s dependence on Vicodin starts small and then slowly becomes a full-blown problem. While dealing with a hypochondriac patient who comes into th...

SHREYA SINGH  Childhood and the ages of adolescence are extremely crucial, being a person’s formative years. A loving and supportive environment in those years can influence what kind of a human being a person turns out to be which may go on to shape the course of their life. Traumatizing event in this period can have severe consequences and the short and long term impacts are devastating.   Sexual abuse in childhood has lasting effects and can cause severe emotional damage. Most recently this correlation was seen in the popular show, Patrick Melrose based on the semiautobiographical book series by Edward St Aubyn in which the protagonist struggles with substance abuse issues to deal with the relationship with his sexually abusive father. The primary focus of this blog post is Childhood sexual abuse and it’s link with substance abuse. The post starts by analysing the positive correlation between childhood sexual abuse with substance abuse later in life and discu...

Vedika Puri According to the 2017 World Drug Report, an estimated 271 million people worldwide had used drugs at least once in 2016 and  some 35 million people suffered from a drug use disorder. These people demand immediate care and rehabilitation but only 1 in every 7 receives the required treatment (UNODC 2019). Treatment options for these people include behavioural interventions and pharmacological cures and despite these being the current most effective treatment approaches for drug addiction, their success rates are far from optimal (Montoya 2008).  According to the NSDUH, only 10% of those treated for substance use disorders are considered recovered  (Montoya 2008) . This is mainly because drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease that presents a heavy burden to the individual and society.  Repeated drug use can change the brain so that an addicted person’s self-control and ability to resist cravings are affected.  Recent statistics show th...

A dishevelled Shahid Kapoor with his uncombed hair and shaggy beard is sitting in front of the alcohol shop waiting for it to open, his hands are trembling and his eyes are full of anger, pain and misery. At the crack of dawn, the shrieking voice of the shutter alarms him. He takes a crate of desi daru (local whiskey) and darts back to his apartment. He drowns himself in misery and alcohol while recollecting details of how his ex-lover (Preethi) left him. This is just one of the scenes from ‘Kabir Singh’, where a brilliant medical student with anger issues resorts to alcoholism to ease his pain and suffering after his breakup. In this essay, I will argue that the portrayal of the relationship between ‘alcohol’ and ‘depression’ is both misleading and dangerous for the audience.  According to George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, drinking alcohol is a common form of self-medication for depression (Hay). Experts also suggest that...

Since the conception of the cinema, the genre ‘Horror’ has attracted millions of viewers, satiating their primary desire for tension, relevance and unrealism. A large portion of these horror movies are structured along the same plot of the protagonist becoming possessed by a demonic spirit, the progression of the possession and finally the awaited exorcism of this demonic presence leading to either the death of the protagonist or the expulsion of the spirit and the protagonist's life recommencing.  The dilemma between science and faith remains constant through these movies usually in the form of a conflict between the doctor and the priest both arguing for their respective schools of thought. It always, however, ends up being an apparent possession not a mental illness.  A closer look at case histories of these supposed possessions would allow one to easily identify a psychiatric condition. The possessed individual complains of being controlled by an entity or power e...