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Mood Disorders In The Film Helen

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Summary The Movie Helen, tells the story of a well accomplished and successful music professor who is going through depression, Helen. The movie shows how Helen redraws from her life—family, friends and career due to depression. This movie highlights the struggle people with disorders go through, the stigma they face and the importance of patience, understanding and support system for people going through depression or any mental illness. During the movie Helen is forced to come to terms with her depression and overcomes this with the help of her friend Matilda. Definition of Mood Disorder Mood disorders as diverse in nature. Mood disturbances are intense and happen long enough to be clearly dysfunctional and many times lead to serious problems …show more content…

In the film, we see that Helen has hypersomnia an example of this would be when she woke up from her sleep thinking it was still morning and wondering why Julia (her daughter) hadn't gone to school, not realizing that it was 4PM (Nettelbeck. S, 2009). Another symptom seen in the movie mentioned in the DSM-5 as symptom seven of criteria (A) is “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or being sick)” (Butcher, Hooley & Mineka, 2014). She feels so guilty that she wanted to keep her illness away from her daughter and has a rage when she finds out that David told her daughter, Julia. The level of worthlessness and guilt Helen had was bad that she chose to move out and stay with Matilda. The sixth symptom seen in the movie as mentioned in the DSM-5 is “Recurrent thought of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or s specific plan for committing suicide” (Butcher, Hooley & Mineka, 2014). In the movie, Helen had two attempted suicides, the first was when she tried to stab herself with a knife and the second time by overdosing. Criteria B of Major Depressive Disorder states that “the symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning” (Butcher, Hooley & Mineka, 2014). From the symptoms mentioned above we see that Helen’ social, occupational and other necessary functioning areas of her life were drastically

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