Maanya Vasishtha
'Atrangi Re', a Bollywood film, deals with the sensitive subject of mental illness and trauma, with one of the main characters displaying symptoms of Schizophrenia. However, the twists and turns in the movie, no matter how entertaining they are, come at the expense of romanticising mental illness for dramatic purposes. The film primarily portrays a woman called Rinku, who witnessed the brutal killing of her parents in her childhood and has lived with that trauma ever since. As an adult, she is unable to recover from the trauma and as a way to cope, believes that she’s in love with a man named Sajjad, who later turns out to be a figment of her imagination. She's eloped with him several times only to be dragged back by her family. She is later compelled to marry another man, who falls in love with her, only to discover that she has significant mental health issues. As a doctor, he treats her with his friend, also a doctor, who claims to be a psychiatrist who 'knows women.' They support Rinku's idea that Sajjad is present in flesh and blood. They even pay onlookers to act as if Sajjad is real until she has a full-fledged breakdown and realises the truth.
The overall depiction is problematic, wherein her illness is exploited for comic effect. The title of the film itself means ‘unusual’ or ‘funnily weird’, which serves as an indicator of what the filmmakers were trying to depict in the film and only reveals how insensitively the issue is dealt with. To begin with, the female protagonist is diagnosed with schizophrenia. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) (1), schizophrenia is essentially defined by positive symptoms. Diagnosis is made upon a 1-month presence of either hallucinations, delusions, or disorganized speech plus another criterion A symptom—which adds grossly disorganized/catatonic behaviour and negative symptoms to the three aforementioned symptoms (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
As mentioned before, she believes to be in love with a man who is imaginary and often engages in conversations with him throughout the movie, therefore suggesting that she did experience severe hallucinations. Hallucinations are perceptions that occur in the absence of external stimuli and have sufficient realistic quality to resemble the actual perception of external phenomena (Goldsworthy and Whitaker, 2015). While the film accurately depicts how the woman experiences them, it fails to depict how the hallucinations should be managed and treated. For instance, the psychiatrist discusses Rinku’s condition rather humorously. He believes she should be "kept in a museum," and it's unfortunate that she's "freely roaming" the streets of Delhi instead. To make matters worse, he initially congratulates his friend on averting disaster by not falling in love with a crazy woman. He also addresses her symptoms by referring to them as ‘paagalpan’ or ‘madness.’ This supposedly satirical depiction promotes stigma around mental illnesses and trivialises their seriousness. Moreover, a psychiatrist’s lack of empathy and sympathy for someone who experienced childhood trauma so intense that they lost touch with reality to be able to cope, is alarming.
Following that, they try to ‘cure’ her schizophrenia through unprescribed pills, sans professional treatment and consultation. What's more bizarre is that the pill provided to Rinku appears to have instantaneous effects and eliminates Rinku's hallucinations as soon as she encounters them. However, the insistence of the psychiatrist on taking some sort of medication as a necessary step in treating Rinku does stand out as a small bright spark. Seeking professional help is the right step in managing schizophrenia since it requires lifelong treatment, even when symptoms have subsided. Treatment with medications and psychosocial therapy can help manage the condition (Patel et al. 2014).
Furthermore, as was also mentioned before, it is maintained that her hallucinations developed as a result of her not being able to cope with her childhood trauma of witnessing her parents’ death. Though research is still not extremely established about the relationship between traumatic life instances and the prevalence of schizophrenia, several models have been used to explain this relationship, like the stress-vulnerability and stress-sensitivity hypotheses (Mayo et al., 2017). So to say, the film tries to culminate the story by showcasing that the doctor, who is her other lover, can apparently bring her back to reality and rid her of her trauma with his ‘love.’ It grossly oversimplifies the complicated experience of navigating the neurotypical world while living with psychosis; it sends the message that finding love is all that is required to be "cured" of mental illnesses.
While the film does try to simplify and convey to a simpler audience what schizophrenia might look like, it fails in portraying an accurate picture of the disorder, promoting the message of seeking professional help and destigmatising mental health issues.
Citations
Association AP. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association (2013).
Goldsworthy, R., & Whitaker, H. (2015, March 12). Hallucinations, neural basis of. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080970868540100
Patel, K. R., Cherian, J., Gohil, K., & Atkinson, D. (2014, September). Schizophrenia: Overview and treatment options. P & T : a peer-reviewed journal for formulary management. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4159061
Mayo, D., Corey, S., Kelly, L. H., Yohannes, S., Youngquist, A. L., Stuart, B. K., Niendam, T. A., & Loewy, R. L. (2001, January 1). The role of trauma and stressful life events among individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis: A Review. Frontiers. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00055/full
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