Perks Of Being A Wallflower Mental Illness

Perks of Being a Wallflower is all about a freshman boy named Charlie and his experience with his first year of high school. Charlie’s best friend, Michael, recently took his life so Charlie is trying to manage going through life without his best friend. Because of his circumstances Charlie prefers to be a “wallflower” and rather watch from the sidelines and not be the center of attention. Charlie ends up meeting Sam and Patrick who become his very close friends and are destined to giving Charlie the friendship he deserves. What doesn’t get revealed until the end of the movie is that Charlie’s detachment is caused from his traumatic experience of being sexually abused by his Aunt Helen as a child. The main mental condition that Charlie has

Charlie has various flashbacks throughout the film and each time it is a memory of his aunt and him. The DSM-V explains the flashbacks as causing a person to have a complete loss of awareness and surroundings. When Charlie has these flashbacks, it usually feels as if everything around him has stopped and nothing else is relevant other than the flashback. As stated early, Charlie has a hard time opening and trusting others which is one of the symptoms explained in the DSM-V. Charlie has a hard time opening and trusting others because he fears what others may think of him or his past. He doesn’t feel like anyone would be able to relate. One of the symptoms of PTSD in the DSM-V is blaming oneself for the traumatic event. Charlie believes that he is the reason that his aunt passed away in a car crash and has constant guilt and shame from that experience. He explains that if is aunt was never going to get his birthday present, she never would have passed away. DSM-V states that one of the symptoms of PTSD is being in a persistent negative emotional state. I would say that Charlie is in a persistent negative emotional state, because almost every day he experiences some sort of negative emotion. One symptom Charlie has that is different from the DSM-V is he can still participate in daily activities. He goes to school every day and has a social life with his