Depictions in Film
Stigma of Psychosis
How Media Frames Psychosis
Statistics About Psychosis
200
In this film, the main protagonist, Patrick Bateman (pictured above, played by Christian Bale), displays psychosis through various behaviors and tendencies.
What is American Psycho?
In the movie, Bateman exhibits homicidal thoughts and hallucinations among other symptoms of severe psychosis.
200
Many people believe in these, which are prejudicial misnomers about certain communities. One example of these is believing that all psychosis sufferers talk to themselves.
What are stereotypes?
Stereotypes can be harmful to any community, and sufferers of psychosis have been discriminated based on stereotypes for centuries. This stereotype in particular is incorrect because they're often just responding to hallucinations they're having.
200
The media tends to depict psychosis in a ______ light, a harmful action that only makes the public distrust increase.
What is negative?
200
*Daily Double
While many people believe that psychosis begins to exhibit itself around the age of 21, it most often doesn't occur until around this age on average.
What is 24?
While the brain is still in development stages until 28 in some people, the neural effects of psychosis can start to deteriorate the brain while a separate lobe is finishing developing.
400
Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio), pictured below, becomes consumed by and is unable to escape the delusions and hallucinations that plague his mind in this 2010 psychological thriller.
What is Shutter Island?
Teddy's inability to distinguish truth from fantasy peaks when he learns his partner, Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo), is actually a doctor assigned to him at a mental hospital where he's put for murder.
400
Those who seek to alleviate their symptoms of psychosis seek this, which can be done through medication and therapy among other things.
What is treatment? (accept cure, therapy, other similar answers)
Despite misnomers that psychosis is incurable and untreatable, there are many ways to help psychosis.
400
A common misconception is that psychosis is the same thing as these, which are more cognitive and permanent mental illnesses.
What are psychotic disorders?
Psychosis is a symptom that is brought about by a traumatic event to the body (stress, drugs, etc.) whereas psychotic disorders represent a more fundamental, neurodivergent mental illness.
400
About this many teenagers per year experience an episode of psychosis. (all groups answer)
What is 100,000?
600
The Narrator in Fight Club states early in the film that the first sign of his descent into psychosis is this illness that causes sleepless nights and days of fatigue and disorientation.
What is Insomnia?
Psychosis can be caused by a variety of other mental illnesses that deteriorate neural pathways, such as insomnia
600
This is a common misrepresentation of sufferers of psychosis that makes the public more fearful of the patients.
What is dangerous/violent?
Even though a person going through Psychosis may behave strangely (hearing voices or seeing things that don't exist). It is more likely that these people will harm themselves than others, which is why it is important to halpe an individual with psychotic sympotms seek immediate treatment.
600
Those that are most often called to respond to a public display of psychosis are this occupation.
What are police officers?
This has been criticized because police are ill equipped to handle mental illness. This policy has led to many sufferers of psychosis being jailed, injured, or killed by police because of their mental illness.
600
This is how many people per 100 that suffer from psychosis. (hint: less than 10) (all groups answer)
What is 3?
While this seems insignificant, it would be essentially like being in a class of 33 students and having one student suffer from psychosis. It is much more common than other disorders, but other mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders are more common.
800
Psychosis is misrepresented in films for the benefit of the movie industry in many different genres, including this. (name one)
What is Slasher, psychological thriller, horror, comedy, drama, docudrama?
800
Early hypotheses that have since been disproven about psychosis treatment include the item pictured above, which was to be worn on the head of the patient.
What is a "tin foil hat"?
Yet another stereotype of the psychosis community, while it seems silly today, it was once believed to be able to keep the voices out of their heads.
800
When depicting psychotic characteristics, the media tends to pursue ______ (extreme or restricted) depictions.
What is extreme?
They attempt to catch more attention by giving up some of the realities of the illness and instead focusing on the wild anecdotes that get the eyes of an audience
800
This is one of various contributing factors to psychosis development.
What is trauma, genetics, mental health conditions, and substance abuse?
Psychosis is not something that is overwhelmingly genetic or environmentally driven. There must be the genes that encode for psychosis present in the sufferer, and they usually have to endure a certain amount of environmental stress to start to exhibit symptoms of psychosis.
1000
*Daily Double
This procedure - sometimes performed on patients with psychosis - involves inserting a surgical instrument through the eye and into the brain.
What is a transorbital lobotomy?
Lobotomies (also performed commonly through nasal entry) were common in early psychosis patients because it separated the brain hemispheres and essentially put the patient in a vegetative state.
1000
This is a term that is commonly used to refer to patients of psychosis that shortens the word and is used in a negative fashion.
What is "psycho"?
IT IS NEVER okay to use these words when we describe an individual going through Psychosis. This can lead society to associate these words with harmful stereotypes and as a result, this can heighten the sense of fear when we talk about Psychosis, which is detrimental towards fighting the stigma.
1000
These are two ways that psychosis is misrepresented in the media (any two).
What is extra loud, scared of everything, isolated, must be locked in a padded room, dangerous, unpredictable, "crazy", untreatable?
1000
Despite the push for destigmatization of mental illness, only 1 in 3 people seek this type of aid that is based on patient-mediated discussion.
What is a specialist/therapist?
Talking through issues and discussing them with a true mental health professional allows them to accurately assess the root of the issues that are causing psychosis, so they can establish an effective treatment method afterward.