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Silver Linings Playbook: Bipolar Disorders In The Family

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According to the National Institute of Mental Health (2015) there are at least 5 mental health disorders that share the same genetic risk, one of those 5 being bipolar disorder. This discovery signifies that it is more common for a child to be diagnosed with a mental disorder when the parent also has been diagnosed with an illness. Mental illness not only can affect the person who has been diagnosed but also their family members and friends. Because of the genetic link and risk between mental health disorders it is not uncommon to have 2 or more people living in the same household who have mental illnesses, diagnosed or not, this can cause significant amounts of stress and family issues in the household, especially if there are undiagnosed …show more content…

The greatest tension being between Pat (Bradley Cooper) and his father Pat Sr. (Robert Di Nero). Pat was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and showed many signs of his disorder throughout the film. Pat had frequent manic episodes, each episode adding more tension to his relationship with his father and causing his mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), a lot of stress. According to Calabrese, Keming, and Sachs (2017) increased energy is a normal characteristic of bipolar disorder and manic episodes. In the film Pat is constantly up in the middle of the night bothering his parents, one particular occurrence being when he is up at 4 AM disturbing his parents about Hemingway, which he was reading because his ex-wife Nikki (Brea Bee) assigned “A Farewell to Arms” to her students to read. Pat set a goal to read all of the books Nikki assigned to her class, along with a goal to lose weight, both in effort to get back with her. This increase in goal related activity is another Manic episode symptom (Bressert, 2018). Bessert also states that in order for one to be diagnosed with a manic episode there must be three symptoms present (2018). Pat has multiple other symptoms for manic episodes one of them being his increased self-esteem, he frequently boasts about his major weight loss, which he also states he did solely for …show more content…

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