[Enygmatic]

I was wondering which disorder you thought was less well known and/or misunderstood by the general population.

The reason I ask is due to me writing a screenplay and I hope to bring more awareness of mental disorders and what people with a disorder go through everyday. I decided not to have two characters with mental disorders due to worrying about it becoming cluttered and less focused.

The screenplay is set in the American Frontier (1885) where mental disorders were less understood, less treatable and the people more marginalised from society.

If you have any questions about the story, character and overall idea just let me know.

 

[prplchknz]

I don't have advice, just a stupid opinion. I am always wary when people try things like this, a lot of time it has the opposite effect, and i'm just saying be careful and make sure it's well done and interview people who have the experience in the disorder you pick. and keep in mind with in a diagnosis the experience will vary, yeah they'll have common symptoms and some things will be similar but you will piss someone off.

 

[Glory]

write about a borderline misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and given antipsychotics.. then developing psychoses. People with personality disorders shouldn't be given drugs.

 

[dragthewaters]

I would definitely say BPD. People tend to feel bad when someone has schizophrenia. With BPD 90% of the time they are like "that person is a monster who will destroy everything they touch, and they should not be around other humans."

However why do you have to set it in 1885? These disorders weren't even diagnosed back then. There is plenty of stigma today.

 

[Enygmatic]

I don't have advice, just a stupid opinion. I am always wary when people try things like this, a lot of time it has the opposite effect, and i'm just saying be careful and make sure it's well done and interview people who have the experience in the disorder you pick. and keep in mind with in a diagnosis the experience will vary, yeah they'll have common symptoms and some things will be similar but you will piss someone off.

It's not a stupid opinion. I am doing as much research as I can on the disorders and finding as many first hand accounts to make it as authentic as it can be. I'm aware no matter how well I make it, there will be someone who will hate it but I don't think that should discourage me to try to help bring awareness to a modern taboo.

write about a borderline misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and given antipsychotics.. then developing psychoses. People with personality disorders shouldn't be given drugs.

Okay. Thanks for the idea but it sounds very similar to a film coming out this year called Love and Mercy and people may think I copied some of the ideas.

I would definitely say BPD. People tend to feel bad when someone has schizophrenia. With BPD 90% of the time they are like "that person is a monster who will destroy everything they touch, and they should not be around other humans."

However why do you have to set it in 1885? These disorders weren't even diagnosed back then. There is plenty of stigma today.

Thank you for the contribution. I decided to set it in 1885 due to the lack of treatment back then as I thought that a film about people suffering alone in the past hadn't been the focus of a film before (correct me if I'm wrong). I spoke more on the idea on the link below (at the time I thought it would be a better novel but I thought that a screenplay would be better due to my love of film).
http://personalitycafe.com/advice-center/518954-writing-novel-characters-all-16-mbti.html
I'll think over a modern day version of the screenplay.

Thanks again everyone, all your comments are giving me lots of ideas and helping me to improve the screenplay as a whole. :happy:

 

[dragthewaters]

Thank you for the contribution. I decided to set it in 1885 due to the lack of treatment back then as I thought that a film about people suffering alone in the past hadn't been the focus of a film before (correct me if I'm wrong). I spoke more on the idea on the link below (at the time I thought it would be a better novel but I thought that a screenplay would be better due to my love of film).

There's not really much effective treatment now....

But anyway, whatever you decide to do, best of luck!

 

[Enygmatic]

There's not really much effective treatment now....

But anyway, whatever you decide to do, best of luck!

Poor wording on my part, there is more of an understanding of how it happens and what it is now among psychiatrists as well as therapy which can help. And thank you.

 

[Thalassa]

I would say Borderline Personality Disorder, because people have recognized schizophrenia as madness (or demon posession) for quite some time.

It's controversial though to set it in 1885 though since some people would argue the disorder only exists within the framework of our modern culture. Back in the day histrionics were just dramatic emotional people, in fact it was pretty much synonymous with womanhood in the 19th century. ..a borderline probably would also be viewed as a passionate or temperamental artist type, you know a lot of creative people self destructed in the past.

Especially in certain culture this wouldn't necessarily be recognized as illness. Around the mid 20th century outsiders began to believe there was more madness and eccentricity in the American South, but the South as a society evolved with its own norms, not looking down on emotional natures like the more straight laced Puritan types in the northeast. Southern people were more agrarian, spontaneous, and lived closer to nature's cycles.

Something similar could easily be said about the Western frontier. Doubtlessly a lot of sociopaths thrived there, and people who were things like borderline probably fit more easily into a world of unexpected horrors, shoot outs, legal prostitutes, villians and tenacious capitalists. There Will Be Blood is a depiction of a Western frontier sociopath.

 

[Thalassa]

I would definitely say BPD. People tend to feel bad when someone has schizophrenia. With BPD 90% of the time they are like "that person is a monster who will destroy everything they touch, and they should not be around other humans."

However why do you have to set it in 1885? These disorders weren't even diagnosed back then. There is plenty of stigma today.

Who says that about Borderlines? It really depends on the person, but it's largely characterized by worship/devaluation and a real invasive clinginess, something that yes can escalate into suicidal threats or jealous rages. In most cases they're more dangerous to themselves than others, with their tendencies towards substance abuse and suicide, and in other cases "cutting" and watnot. Ime, they're more emotionally abusive than anything, if you don't know how to disengage from it.

The ones who do super crazy shit or kill people are very low functioning, and usually it's compounded by extreme substance abuse.

 

[dragthewaters]

Who says that about Borderlines? It really depends on the person, but it's largely characterized by worship/devaluation and a real invasive clinginess, something that yes can escalate into suicidal threats or jealous rages. In most cases they're more dangerous to themselves than others, with their tendencies towards substance abuse and suicide, and in other cases "cutting" and watnot. Ime, they're more emotionally abusive than anything, if you don't know how to disengage from it.

The ones who do super crazy shit or kill people are very low functioning, and usually it's compounded by extreme substance abuse.

I see this attitude a lot on places like Reddit and BPDFamily. Even right here on PerC a lot of people respond to BPD with "run as fast as you can and don't look back." It's kind of ironic since BPD is all about feeling unlovable and technically other people do react to them as if they were unlovable.

Yes most people with BPD don't kill people and so on, but this is about how they are perceived, not how they actually are. Just look at how people with BPD are usually depicted in the media.

 

[Thalassa]

I see this attitude a lot on places like Reddit and BPDFamily. Even right here on PerC a lot of people respond to BPD with "run as fast as you can and don't look back." It's kind of ironic since BPD is all about feeling unlovable and technically other people do react to them as if they were unlovable.

Yes most people with BPD don't kill people and so on, but this is about how they are perceived, not how they actually are. Just look at how people with BPD are usually depicted in the media.

Yeah I go to a psychiatry site sometimes, which is much more well informed on abnormal psych than this one, and I still ironically see a bias towards bordelines...sometimes even over ASPD! I think it is because they create external upheaval more than most of the other pds ....histrionics also draw attention to themselves but on a daily basis tend to appear charming, articulate, social...the drama is still there but I guess not on such a deep, invasive level. ...that's the primary ways family suffers, histrionics, narcissists and sociopaths simply aren't as clingy or invasive, except for when narcissists are "love bombing" to attract supply.

But what annoys me is how so many narcissistic people think they're normal. God I just want to choke them sometimes, that's my personal bias.

 

[Fern]

I thought this thread would be asking for some sort of pseudo diagnosis from us. I'm glad to see that's not the case


I would have to say that they are both generally misunderstood, but for different reasons though BPD, as most others on this thread have vocalized, is highly stigmatized if not themost highly stigmatized mental disorder of all.

It's coming to light more and more, however, that BPD is linked to abuse and should be considered similar to PTSD, which people are highly sympathetic towards. And then there's that whole bias to diagnosing Borderline men with PTSD but flipping the status quo when it comes to women -_- but I won't get too much in to that.

As for the schizos... Just kidding I would never dream of calling them that.
I think people have common misconceptions about what that means (e.g. They're always dangerous, they can't function, they have multiple personalities - no, fuckers, that's Dissociative Identity Disorder) but they seem to be, as a whole, less distructive misconceptions.


TL;DR yeah, man, BPD seems to be both more misunderstood and less well-know.
I mean, I have known of schizophrenia for as long as I can remember but only heard of borderline after I met someone with the disorder.

 

[Enygmatic]

Thank you for your replies.