Thinking & Writing Essay

Hailey Robertson

Fall 2013

Thinking & Writing Essay

The New Normal

Silver Linings Playbook is a touching movie that explores the world of mental illness in a refreshing way. Most of the characters in fact have varying degrees of a disorder, but Pat is the main character who is the focus and who has the most severe mental illness and in turn gets the most attention for it. Silver Linings Playbook aims to show the viewer that people with mental illnesses are like anybody else and maybe in some cases more normal, and need not be treated any differently which can be harming.

The film opens with Pat in mental health facility because of the outburst that he had when he found out that his wife was having an affair, and we later learn that he is undiagnosed bi-polar. He comes out of the facility when he does because his mother decides it has been “long enough” and it’s time for him to come home even though the doctors don’t recommend him leaving yet. This is the first of many times we see how uncomfortable both Pats family and friends are with the fact that he was in a mental facility. It goes further to point out first with his friend and then with his own brother that they both make excuses why they couldn’t visit him while he was in the mental facility because it would have been too uncomfortable to see him in that sort of situation.

One of the biggest hot topic issues in our country right now is that of guns. We are seeing a trend of mass shootings all over the country, and nine times out of ten the shooters has a mental disorder which drove them to take the lives of others and usually themselves. If we focused more on getting people psychological help, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem. It would be an easy thing to teach children all through school the signs of these disorders like depression, bi-polar, etc., and that way everyone would know what to look for in people that they are close too. Instead we live in a world where when someone starts acting “weird” or “off” many peoples reaction is to separate themselves from them, which is the worst thing that could be done. Like we see in the movie, Pat does not have any progress because his family is tiptoeing around him or treating him differently, it is when he is with Tiffany, who also had a mental breakdown because of the death of her husband, that is honest to him and really understands what he is going through that he starts to improve. One in four adults in America struggle with a mental disorder, diagnosed or not, and maybe that would be lower if we knew what to look for to get people help. Or maybe if we got rid of the stigma that surrounds it people would feel more confortable coming forward themselves and seek out help.

Honesty is a big theme throughout the movie because both Pat and Tiffany are very honest with everyone else which makes others uncomfortable. At one point the two of them are discussing different medications they had been on and the others that are in the room are visually uncomfortable with the openness with which they are discussing it. Then later when one of Pats family members tries to stop him from being so open, he retorts that maybe he, Tiffany and his friend from the facility all know something that they don’t because of their being honest. This also comes up right after Pat’s friend points out that Tiffany goes to therapy so he should watch out for her, even though Pat himself goes to therapy. The film touches on this over and over again with people being uncomfortable with mental illness and almost dehumanizing them the way they talk about them, and it’s really to point out that this really happens all over and that we ourselves need to not be so thrown off by something as normal as therapy. Going to a counselor or a psychologist is so normal these days that it really shouldn’t have the stigma that it does, because it doesn’t deserve it and could help so many people and maybe even stop the growing number of shootings and suicides.

It is not just the main characters that struggle psychologically. Pats father has violent outbursts and his friend Ronnie is struggling in his marriage where he is too afraid to confront his issues and instead listens to heavy metal. Pat who knows this is no good tries to help him, but Ronnie just responds that its okay because it isn’t possible to be happy all the time, which Pat is appalled by because of his mantra of finding a silver lining in everything. With this attitude it is no wonder that people have trouble confronting their issues because they believe it is just something that happens and they don’t have any choice but to accept it and move on without fixing anything.

            Silver Linings Playbook fights for those with mental illness. In this day and age when everyone is so judgmental of those will disorders that they brush them off, treat them differently, or tiptoe around the fact that something may be off about them. When in reality they should be supportive and urge them to get help if it is serious enough. This film urges that we get rid of the stigma that surrounds something so common that a quarter of Americans struggle with it in one way or another, and treat them like the normal human beings that they are.