MDD and Little Miss Sunshine

 Maanya Agarwal

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) is a tragicomedy, an  adventure that follows the Hoover family on a disaster road trip, where family tensions play out along the way. Many of the main characters are seen to be dealing with psychological issues, inluding Major Depressive Disorder potrayed in one of the characters. This movie shows a raw and meaningful look into living with such a disorder and leaves one with a realistic depiction and hopeful message about the same. This article breaks down the portrayal of depression and the experience of living with mental health.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is characterised by perisistant low mood, esteem for atleast two weeks with recurring thoughts of death or suicide. Mood changes often include abnormal sadness or irritability, accompanied by loss of pleasure. od can swing back and forth rapidly, and it may only take something small to set it off. Cognitively, one may experience thoughts of hopelessness, which can often lead to suicidal thoughts. Rumination constitutes another cognitive sign of depression, or thinking the same negative thoughts over and over. Specific events have been known triggers; in younger cases, between thirty to fifty percent of depression situations emerge slowly against backgrounds of family disharmony or friendship problems (National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (UK), 2005). 

Through Frank, the film manages to show the most raw components of MDD as well as a realistic approach to how he tries to recover from it. Frank is a scholar on the teachings of Proust and he comes to live with his sister and her family after a failed suicide attempt. It was described to be prompted due to his lover leaving him for an academic rival, which left him depressed and unemployed. Another real life fact that makes this happening more real is frank being homosexual, which increases one’s likelyhood to commit suicide 5 times more than someone who isn’t. This statistic stems from the amount of stigma and rejection from society that is associated with being homosexual and the anxiety and stress that may comes with that. The potrayal of suicide in Little Miss Sunshine is very important because frequently, media attempts to romanticise suicide, make it appear as the only path and it has been reported that an increase in media coverage on suicide themes, might increase the likelyhood of attempts suicide (Gould, 2001). In the case of this movie, suicide isn’t glorify or go into details about the disorder itself. The potrayal of depression is a normal happening, anyone can face and something that doesn't have to be the forefront of your existence. 

While the other members of the family are all struggling in one way or another, this makes for an interesting dynamic to observe. Circumstances lead to the family having to travel for the daughter’s pageant and as Frank remains on suicide watch, they cannot leave him behind. Many things unfold on the journey and throughout we follow the effects of it on Frank and details of his journey of recovery on this trip as well. You can see Frank deal initially with communication after the trauma he has been through, portraying how he may feel isolated in some way and depressed. Another sysmpotm of depression that vould be potrayed here is his anxiety in people not understanding him and thus, unable to converse with them. Again, his lack of control over his emotions is portrayed by outbursts of sadness or anger that he shows or his sarcastic approach to deal with the issues of other people as a coping mechanism. His depression isnt the forefront of his character rather something he deals with throughout his daily life. Throughout this, the movie also highlights over his empathetic qualties, how he withholds premature judgement and judging issues by a product of the situation and not the person itself. These moments help support the idea that depression can be a part of someone’s life and does not have to completely overtake ones ability function, and how mental illnesses such as depression can fluctuate in its degrees. This is specially seen when he is forced to encounter his former lover, the source of much of his trauma, a moment the audience is reminded of his mental health and a painful moment to watch as he tries to hide his bandaged wrists.   

Frank’s potrayal accompanied by the issues seen in the other members of the family aim to make the audience look at their own dysfunction that they may be suffering from. The film manages to make one insoect into thesmelves and relays a message on how life problems may manifest themselves in one’s daily life and relatiopnships and how that is a common occurrence that does not need to be hidden from. The heavier message it carries about living with mental illness and dysnfunction makes it more than a comedy and a far more important piece of media to be consumed. 

References

1. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

2. National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (UK). Depression in Children and Young People: Identification and Management in Primary, Community and Secondary Care. Leicester (UK): British Psychological Society; 2005. (NICE Clinical Guidelines, No. 28.) Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56425/

3. Gould, M. (2001). Suicide and the Media. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 932, 200-224.

4. Little miss sunshine or little miss psychological dysfunction. The Artifice. (n.d.). Retrieved April 5, 2022, from https://the-artifice.com/little-miss-sunshine-psychological-dysfunction/