I have chosen to write a review of the movie “I am Sam” because it is a powerful, emotional film about love, the family bonds, and parenting challenges. The main character, Sam, lived in Los Angeles, CA in the 1990s. Sam has the mental capacity of seven years old, he works at Starbucks and has a daughter with a homeless woman who abandoned them after she gave birth to his daughter. Sam is an avid Beatles fan and named his daughter Lucy Diamond after the Beatles song. Sam’s mental impairments are autistic tendencies and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Sam’s moderate obsessive-compulsive disorder interferes with social and occupational activities and only when he is surrounded by his “mentally challenged” friends or people who he trusts, then his anxiety level decreases. He deals with life his way by following an established routine dictated by his OCD, and any changes to this routine cause to Sam a lot of stress.
Affect of Mental Illness on the relationships
Sam is a single parent to his daughter Lucy. Despite his mental disabilities and limited knowledge of parenting, I think he gives all his best to his daughter with unconditional love. He says to Lucy, “Love is all you need.” He is a responsible father who seeks parenting advice from agoraphobic Annie, a lady friend, who lives one building over. Kind Annie tries to
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The comorbid condition that Sam experienced is the obsessive-compulsive disorder, a type of anxiety disorder. This condition made him behave in reparative and compulsive ways to deal with thoughts that he did not want but could not get out of his head. I have noticed that when Sam is thinking, he looks up and he also has fine hand tremors that make him play with own fingers; he can speak fluently, but awkward and sometimes inappropriate, which are signs and symptoms of a mild case of