"Next to Normal": Close But No Cigar?
Jun. 26th, 2011 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
r_grayjoyIncludes some mixed nuts stuff -- and not filtered this time; I think it's important to put it out there.
This afternoon, my roommate and I went to see the musical, Next to Normal, at the Kimmel Center. My reaction to the show is... mixed. And the subject matter hits close enough to home that I feel like I need to post about it.
For those unfamiliar with the show, it's about a "typical" suburban American family who are trying to hold it together in the face of mental illness. The lead character, Diana, the wife and mother, has been struggling with bipolar disorder for sixteen years. We see her symptoms growing worse as she tries to understand and treat her illness while coping with her own not-entirely-satisfactory life and trying to be "sane" for her family. The story examines the effects of mental illness on both the individual and the family as well as questioning the concept of "normal".
Brian Yorkey, the dude who wrote the story and lyrics, wanted to move radically away from mental illness as it tends to be sensationalized in the media and the resulting notion that it's something that only happens to tortured artists and serial killers. He apparently did a pretty extensive amount of research and interviewed both patients and doctors in his attempts to make the story as "authentic" as possible. (I'm paraphrasing/summarizing from this article, which is worth a read for its remarks on mental illness, misinformation, and stigma.)
Upon seeing the show myself, I'm not certain he succeeded. Although the situation he presents is very real, it still manages to be sensationalized and misrepresentative. Rather than helping to remove stigma about mental illness, this show might only be serving to bolster it.
While Diana is presented as having bipolar disorder, her symptoms and behavior sit on the pretty extreme end of the illness. She's a bipolar type I -- the most "popularized" sort that people tend to imagine when they hear the term "bipolar disorder" (if they imagine anything specific at all). The typical or common pattern for bipolar I involves pretty extreme manic episodes, often followed by depressive crashes. The episodes tend to be the "acute, severe" sort, meaning they often seem to hit suddenly and hard from almost out of nowhere when the person had previously been having a period of apparent normalcy. (This is a generalization and certainly not always the case. Different people have different patterns. Nonetheless, this is the textbook pattern they seem to be presenting in Next to Normal.)
But wait! There's more! Not only is Diana a bipolar type I, but she's also situated on the extreme end of that! She experiences psychotic episodes, and at times her grasp of reality is rather tenuous. Her illness is severe enough that it could potentially be verging on/placed in bipolar disorder schizoaffective type. That's not schizophrenia, by the way, but a form of bipolar disorder that shares some symptoms and characteristics in common with schizophrenia. It's quite rare and not well understood -- not that any of this stuff is, really.
Here's my first issue. Anyone who goes into this show with little to no knowledge about psychiatric disorders is going to come out with the misguided idea that anyone with "bipolar disorder" is like Diana -- someone who has sudden, acute episodes complete with delusions and hallucinations. Someone who has breaks with reality and sometimes is only holding on by a thread.
This? Is exactly the sort of shit that makes me very, very hesitant to tell anyone about my bipolar diagnosis. Because all too often, people hear "bipolar disorder" and their minds leap to this sort of symptom set. Which is not my illness or my personal experience at all.
Second issue. By the end of the show, it's evident that at least part of Diana's problem has a psychological, rather than a physiological, basis. A traumatic event triggered her illness and denial is helping to maintain it. There's a line near the end where Diana says she realizes that it isn't her mind that's broken; it's her soul. The implication is that Diana needs to deal with her psychological trauma before she can heal.
That is also horrifically misleading. It leads people to the conclusion that mental illness always has a psychological component, which is just not the case. For some of us, it really is a purely physiological medical problem. It's faulty brain wiring or a chemical imbalance or some other such thing leading to unfortunate effects.
Third issue. I came away feeling like they'd represented psychiatric doctors as being somewhat incompetent, and meds for mood disorders as being fairly useless -- or at least worse than the symptoms in some cases. This is so not a good, safe idea to get into people's heads!
So. In conclusion...
In some ways, Yorkey succeeded in his goal. He did portray a certain type of mental illness extremely realistically. He did an excellent job of depicting the frustrating trial-and-error nature of seeking a course of treatment that works for an individual. And he certainly made the point that mental illness isn't just for rockstars and psychopaths, but that it could be happening to anyone, even the seemingly "normal" wife and mother next door.
But in other ways, Yorkey utterly failed. He painted all people with mental illness -- particularly all people with bipolar disorder -- with an absurdly broad brush. He reinforced stereotypes about the connection between psychological problems and mental illness. And he downplayed the importance of medications and other treatments, even to the point of potentially glorifying or suggesting dealing with one's problems sans meds.
Ultimately, Yorkey does an excellent job of making the audience sympathize with and come to understand ONE WOMAN and ONE FAMILY'S struggle, but leaves them wholly without the tools to comprehend the experiences of ANYONE ELSE who deals with mental illness, particularly if those experiences don't match up with the ones portrayed in Next to Normal.
Final note after all of that: This is, I believe, only the second time I've blatantly "outed" myself as a person with bipolar disorder here in my journals. It's certainly no deep, dark secret, but I tend not to tell people about it until they've got to know me a little bit -- because of exactly the sort of misconceptions and stigma I talked about up there. ::points:: Anyway. I do keep a "mixed nuts" filter where I sometimes talk about what's going on with me and the loose screws in my head. Anyone who isn't on it but would like to be is more than welcome to say so and I'll happily add you. In all honesty, it's usually pretty boring there! Far more boring than this musical would have you believe. ;)
Jeez, all of this and I haven't even made it to an actual review of the show beyond this aspect yet. o_O
This afternoon, my roommate and I went to see the musical, Next to Normal, at the Kimmel Center. My reaction to the show is... mixed. And the subject matter hits close enough to home that I feel like I need to post about it.
For those unfamiliar with the show, it's about a "typical" suburban American family who are trying to hold it together in the face of mental illness. The lead character, Diana, the wife and mother, has been struggling with bipolar disorder for sixteen years. We see her symptoms growing worse as she tries to understand and treat her illness while coping with her own not-entirely-satisfactory life and trying to be "sane" for her family. The story examines the effects of mental illness on both the individual and the family as well as questioning the concept of "normal".
Brian Yorkey, the dude who wrote the story and lyrics, wanted to move radically away from mental illness as it tends to be sensationalized in the media and the resulting notion that it's something that only happens to tortured artists and serial killers. He apparently did a pretty extensive amount of research and interviewed both patients and doctors in his attempts to make the story as "authentic" as possible. (I'm paraphrasing/summarizing from this article, which is worth a read for its remarks on mental illness, misinformation, and stigma.)
Upon seeing the show myself, I'm not certain he succeeded. Although the situation he presents is very real, it still manages to be sensationalized and misrepresentative. Rather than helping to remove stigma about mental illness, this show might only be serving to bolster it.
While Diana is presented as having bipolar disorder, her symptoms and behavior sit on the pretty extreme end of the illness. She's a bipolar type I -- the most "popularized" sort that people tend to imagine when they hear the term "bipolar disorder" (if they imagine anything specific at all). The typical or common pattern for bipolar I involves pretty extreme manic episodes, often followed by depressive crashes. The episodes tend to be the "acute, severe" sort, meaning they often seem to hit suddenly and hard from almost out of nowhere when the person had previously been having a period of apparent normalcy. (This is a generalization and certainly not always the case. Different people have different patterns. Nonetheless, this is the textbook pattern they seem to be presenting in Next to Normal.)
But wait! There's more! Not only is Diana a bipolar type I, but she's also situated on the extreme end of that! She experiences psychotic episodes, and at times her grasp of reality is rather tenuous. Her illness is severe enough that it could potentially be verging on/placed in bipolar disorder schizoaffective type. That's not schizophrenia, by the way, but a form of bipolar disorder that shares some symptoms and characteristics in common with schizophrenia. It's quite rare and not well understood -- not that any of this stuff is, really.
Here's my first issue. Anyone who goes into this show with little to no knowledge about psychiatric disorders is going to come out with the misguided idea that anyone with "bipolar disorder" is like Diana -- someone who has sudden, acute episodes complete with delusions and hallucinations. Someone who has breaks with reality and sometimes is only holding on by a thread.
This? Is exactly the sort of shit that makes me very, very hesitant to tell anyone about my bipolar diagnosis. Because all too often, people hear "bipolar disorder" and their minds leap to this sort of symptom set. Which is not my illness or my personal experience at all.
Second issue. By the end of the show, it's evident that at least part of Diana's problem has a psychological, rather than a physiological, basis. A traumatic event triggered her illness and denial is helping to maintain it. There's a line near the end where Diana says she realizes that it isn't her mind that's broken; it's her soul. The implication is that Diana needs to deal with her psychological trauma before she can heal.
That is also horrifically misleading. It leads people to the conclusion that mental illness always has a psychological component, which is just not the case. For some of us, it really is a purely physiological medical problem. It's faulty brain wiring or a chemical imbalance or some other such thing leading to unfortunate effects.
Third issue. I came away feeling like they'd represented psychiatric doctors as being somewhat incompetent, and meds for mood disorders as being fairly useless -- or at least worse than the symptoms in some cases. This is so not a good, safe idea to get into people's heads!
So. In conclusion...
In some ways, Yorkey succeeded in his goal. He did portray a certain type of mental illness extremely realistically. He did an excellent job of depicting the frustrating trial-and-error nature of seeking a course of treatment that works for an individual. And he certainly made the point that mental illness isn't just for rockstars and psychopaths, but that it could be happening to anyone, even the seemingly "normal" wife and mother next door.
But in other ways, Yorkey utterly failed. He painted all people with mental illness -- particularly all people with bipolar disorder -- with an absurdly broad brush. He reinforced stereotypes about the connection between psychological problems and mental illness. And he downplayed the importance of medications and other treatments, even to the point of potentially glorifying or suggesting dealing with one's problems sans meds.
Ultimately, Yorkey does an excellent job of making the audience sympathize with and come to understand ONE WOMAN and ONE FAMILY'S struggle, but leaves them wholly without the tools to comprehend the experiences of ANYONE ELSE who deals with mental illness, particularly if those experiences don't match up with the ones portrayed in Next to Normal.
Final note after all of that: This is, I believe, only the second time I've blatantly "outed" myself as a person with bipolar disorder here in my journals. It's certainly no deep, dark secret, but I tend not to tell people about it until they've got to know me a little bit -- because of exactly the sort of misconceptions and stigma I talked about up there. ::points:: Anyway. I do keep a "mixed nuts" filter where I sometimes talk about what's going on with me and the loose screws in my head. Anyone who isn't on it but would like to be is more than welcome to say so and I'll happily add you. In all honesty, it's usually pretty boring there! Far more boring than this musical would have you believe. ;)
Jeez, all of this and I haven't even made it to an actual review of the show beyond this aspect yet. o_O
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-26 01:32 pm (UTC)(meanwhile, something like ten percent of my friends seem to be bi-polar - with a bunch of them originally misdiagnosed, so...yeah, even the doctors don't seem to know bi-polar when they see it. And yes, add me to the filter, if I'm not already...on DW and LJ, please?)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-26 09:30 pm (UTC)I think bipolar probably is quite easy to misdiagnose if it doesn't "look" like the textbook example and/or if the doctor doesn't ask (all of) the right questions. Someone like me whose primary concern is severe depressive episodes can easily walk into virtually any doctor's office, complain of depression in the winter, get slapped with a label of "depression" or "seasonal affective disorder", and walk out with a prescription for antidepressants. (Which is, uh, really bad if you're actually bipolar.) Smart, experienced head docs are amazing creatures when they can be found.
Anyway, sure thing; will add! ♥