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Why Is Holden Caulfield Mental Illness

740 Words3 Pages

Has anyone in your family ever dealt with mental illness, if so you know how vulnerable they are and how a person can't do anything about it to get help because they’re not right in the head. The person has no idea that they have a problem, this can be seen in holden Caulfield from Catcher In The Rye he suffers from mental illness like depression, but he was untreated for it because of the time period he is in and that society has built up stigmas around mental illness so in turn, he was alienated for it and rejected by society, holden is constantly running from problems and he can't go to his problems and home because of the stigmas in society There are several side effects to mental illness that holden shows like thoughts of suicide and homelessness. …show more content…

A study found that “53,920” (Friedman,2) women in sweden had a form of mental illness. This shows that almost every person can have or obtain some sort of mental illness and that they should receive the proper treatment for it. Another reason on why it's not Holden's fault that he's alienated is that his family has pushed him away for so many years, by moving him to boarding school after boarding schools like pencey prep the only people in his family that cared for him are his little sister phoebe and his little brother allie. Holden speaks so highly of his little sister because he realizes that she's the only one that currently cares for him. “Holden!’ she said right away. She put her arms around my neck and all, she’s very affectionate, for a child…” (Salinger, 161) this shows that Phoebe is genuinely happy to see Holden she's the only one that didn't push him away, adding to his mental illness making him feel like no one wanted him, no one in his family saw the signs of depression in Holden so they couldn't treat the young boy so it wouldn't lead to where he is, right now Holden is currently abusing drugs and alcohol and he's even tried to solicit a

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