The Main Character With Borderline Personality Disorder
In the movie Welcome to Me the main character Alice has BPD which stands for borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder is an illness marked by an ongoing pattern of varying moods, self-image, and behavior. These symptoms often result in impulsive actions and problems in relationships. People with borderline personality disorder may experience intense episodes of anger, depression, and anxiety that can last moments or days. One of the first signs of her borderline personality disorder is when she makes an impulse decision to have a TV show that she makes up as she goes. People with borderline personality disorder often have reckless behavior including impulsive spending which Alice shows in this scene. Another example is when Alice mad a TV segment that was calling out anyone that was mean to her no matter how litter or big the comment was. This is an example of how her mood swings can affect her and how someone can go from being all good in her mind to all bad.
At first, we could see her personality disorder being Bipolar I because of her mood swings. She also shows manic episodes however it does not look like she’s really showing signs of depression. She is as at times, but she doesn’t have the drop off that we would expect if she had Bipolar personality disorder. In addition, we know early on that she has borderline personality disorder because she says it and admits it.
Positive symptoms and negative symptoms do not refer to good or bad symptoms but instead positive meaning an addition to one’s reality that would not normally be there this could be in the form of hallucinations or delusion. Negative symptoms can be though of as the lack of normal behavior so this could be in the form of lack of speech, lack of interest or motivation and social isolation. From the looks of it I don’t think she experienced any positive symptoms she was experiencing heightened emotions and very harsh mood swing however these do not classify as positive symptoms. However, I do recall in the movie when she was having negative symptoms. In the middle of the movie she had a brief time span where we could she distress and cooped up in her house this is a sign of negative symptoms because she was depressing and had a form of social isolation.
The way I think about the difference of syntonic dystonic is that people that are ego syntonic do not really see the wrong in what they might do for example a killer that feels no regret/ guilt in killing someone will be ego syntonic. On the flip side we have dystonic which is when someone understands what they did/ do is wrong. In the movie Alice I feel goes though both egos in the beginning she is syntonic about everything she does not see how her actions are inappropriate she makes off the wall comments that are both inappropriate and odd. However, at the end of the movie she is more dystonic because she apologizes to her best friend for being rude and she now understands what she was saying and doing was wrong. The people around her are dystonic her family and especially her psychiatrist because they would calm her down if things got out of hand.
In the movie Alice’s disorder is chronic we know that she has been suffering rom these symptoms for years now this is something that she has learned to live with. This has also brought a lot of distress/ impairment to her life something that she has to deal with now but learn how to deal with in the future. This disorder is one that does not just come and go away it is one that has sighs as a child and stays until the person dies. The best we can do to help cure this disorder is help teach her how to live with it.
I think her disorder will get slightly better over time we see that her disorder worsens when she does not take her medicine. I think that if she gets back on track with her medicine and regular therapy sessions, she will be able to cope with her disorder. When she was off her medication, we could see the huge mood swings and the impulse decisions hopefully when she gets back on medication these will decrease.
There are many different treatments that could work for her so I will outline some that I think will work the best. First. A psychodynamic therapist can help a her with borderline personality disorder identify and process past experiences and re-shape beliefs about relationships that were derived from experiences with their parents and other authority figures. This can help her get over some of the harsh things she remembers about people in the past. This will also help her from having such huge mood swings. In addition, I think that she needed to be put on medication, but the question is what medication will fit her the best. Personally, I think she needs antipsychotic medication. This medication is often used to stabilize mood, reduce aggression and improve cognitive symptoms that arise in a wide range of psychiatric conditions. And we can see through many examples that she has symptoms of unstable moods and aggressive outbreaks. However, If I had to pit one treatment, I would pick the antipsychotic medication. This medication will help with a lot of the root problems however this medication will just be putting a band aid over the bigger issue and she will never get to the bottom of her disorder.
