Mental Illness Awareness Read-A-Long #Mentalong

Hello everyone,

I wanted to make this a video post, but every time I turned the camera on to record I just got lost in my words and couldn't express what I wanted to say properly, so I decided to make this a blog post instead.

This post is going to be about mental health and what the Mental Illness Awareness Read-A-Long (#Mentalong) means to me.

Mental Illness is classified as any mental health disorder that manipulates a person’s thoughts, behavior, and/or mood. There are many types of mental disorders; to name a few there is depression, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, eating disorders, OCD, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and many many more. This readalong is about raising awareness of mental illness.

Unlike physical illness that can be seen, mental illness is all within the brain and isn't easy to point out. If you were to see someone with a cast or on crutches you would know immediately that they had been/are hurt/sick and in recovery. Whereas if you see someone who looks sad we tend to brush them off and think “oh they’re just having a bad day, they’ll get over it.” Sometimes it isn't as simple as having a singular bad day. As a society, we are quick to judge and not take the time to understand someone before writing them off. Mental illnesses are a result of chemical imbalances in the brain. Yes, there are medications to help with a lot of psychological disorders, but there is also various types of therapy to help with the mental illness as well.  

As many of you know, I have my BA in psychology. Psychology has always interested me, even if I didn't know it until my late teens. I’ve always been interested in science and the brain but it wasn’t until I took a psychology class my senior year of high school that I really started to think about psychology. It wasn’t until my second semester of college that I changed my major to Psychology. I had started out as photography major but quickly changed my mind to something I was more interested in. Being invested in the subject I was ecstatic when I saw Lieke’s post about wanting to do a read-a-long surrounding mental illness awareness.

I think it is great that there are so many books out there that deal with mental illness in a real way. What I mean by this is that they don’t romanticize mental illness but show a different light to what it means to be living with a psychological problem. The fact that ‘Psychological Thriller’ is a genre of movie and book shows just how far we need to progress with mental illness in books, movies, and TV shows. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good psychological thriller (and may be reading one for this readalong), but most of the time the antagonist has a mental health problem and is looked at in the wrong light. Yes, there are people with mental illness that do fit the types of people that are being portrayed, but they are a very small percentage of people living with a mental illness.  There needs to be more novels and movies that show what it is like for the other people living with a mental illness. Thankfully, these types of entertainment are becoming more prominent in society.

Along the lines of entertainment shedding a bad light on mental illness, the news also sheds a poor light. There are often stories where someone did something wrong or hurt someone where they speculate or later discover that the person responsible has a mental illness. Again, it happens, but these types of stories shouldn’t be able to label everyone with a mental illness as a bad person. Most of the time when someone with a mental illness does something wrong it could have been prevented. With proper treatment, both through therapies and potentially medication, people can live with their mental illness. As a society we should be more aware of these issues and not be so quick to label someone as ‘crazy’ when we don’t know what they may be going through.

I’m very excited to be involved with this read-a-long because I truly believe that there needs to be more awareness about mental illness. Again, this subject fascinates me and I am grateful to be a part of this read-a-long.

Thank you for reading.

-Gina  

P.S. 

If you are interested in joining this Read-a-Long please check out THIS VIDEO for all the information. 

You can also join the GOODREADS GROUP and follow the TWITTER PAGE. 

There will be scheduled reading sprints going on throughout each day on the Twitter page to help you achieve any reading goals you have for yourself this week! 

P.P.S 

Below are just a few of my favorite books that involve mental illness. Now I have not read too many, and thanks to this readalong I am finding so many good books I want to check out, but the ones I have read I have loved!! (Note: I'm not putting authors because some of these I don't remember the author off the top of my head, if you'd like to know leave a comment and I'll look it up!) 

Silver Linings Playbook (currently reading)

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Perks of Being a Wallflower

Looking for Alaska

The Burn Journals

Just Listen

Still Alice

You Don't Know Me

A Child Called "IT"  Trilogy 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the ones I've read, but these are the ones that have stuck with me. Again, I'm excited to find more books to read!! :D There are also a TON of great movies out there about mental illness, but I'll save those for another time. 

Still Alice | Movie Review *WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BOTH BOOK AND MOVIE*

*There will be a spoiler warning within this review. The first part is spoiler free. Enjoy!*

So I finally got to see Still Alice tonight. I was very excited to see the movie, especially since I loved the book so much. However, I was slightly disappointed.

If I had to give the movie a star rating it would be a 3.5 out of 5. That is a pretty significant decline from the perfect 5 out of 5 stars I gave the novel.

Overall I think they did a good job at keeping the overall story and characters correct. It's more than I can say for some movie adaptations. *cough* My Sisters Keeper *cough* That being said, I think they could have done a much better job with the overall plot and story line.

Like any movie adaptation there were plenty of missing pieces, but some in Still Alice I feel like some of the changed and missing things were uncalled for. I can understand certain changes, but there were things they left out and changed that should have been kept, I'll get into specifics in the spoiler section.

While watching it I was glad that I had read the book first. While there isn't anything drastic missing from the movie, I feel like it was very under developed. Had I not already been attached to these characters, I don't believe I would have gotten attached.

Let's talk about the acting. Julianne Moore is brilliant! The way she portrays Alice is spot on and she deserves the all of the award buzz she is getting. Kristen Stewart portrays Alice's youngest child Lydia who has moved to LA and is a struggling actress...it's almost as if they wanted the actress to be Lydia's mirror. Personally I am not a huge fan of Stewart, there are only a handful of films that I have enjoyed her in. In this film she wasn't horrible, but I wouldn't put this in my top films she's been in either. Alec Baldwin would have been a PERFECT fit for John, Alice's husband, had they written the character more true to the book. The other actors and actresses in this novel were insignificant and didn't really stand out. That being said they weren't a disappointment either. Some characters weren't written correctly and it showed. Had I not read the book though I wouldn't have even noticed.

Overall this wasn't a horrible movie and I would recommend it, however, I recommend the book even more. If you plan on seeing this movie it will be wise to read the book, if not for the story then at least to get a better understanding of the characters. I think the movie makers bit off more than they could chew with this novel. It has the potential to be a fantastic novel, it just needed to be developed more.

Now onto the spoiler section of this review.

WARNING: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

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Hopefully I have spaced this out enough to not ruin anything for anyone who might just happen to glance down. If I have, I apologize. It is a little more difficult to conceal spoilers within a written review than it is in a video review.   

I'd first like to go through some of the changes that were made. Not all of these bothered me but there were a few that I have my issues with. 

First, Alice and John work at Harvard University in the book, in the movie however, they work at Columbia. Now I'm not sure if there were legal reasons for them changing the college or why the change happened but it did. This isn't that big of a deal for me. It was a bit surprising but at least her career was still Cognitive Psychology Professor with focus in Linguistics. 

What did bother me about this was the lack of career Alice had in the movie. In the book we see Alice at work a lot. We see her go to classes, lectures, staff meetings, grad student presentations, work related parties, and even traveling out of state for conferences on multiple occasions. She fights to stay on at the school when her boss finds out about her disease whereas in the movie she just kind of accepts that she's done teaching and we never see her return. This bothered me because her career is a huge part of who she is, making it a huge part in the book. 

I also didn't like how they left out a lot of the psychological aspects. In the book we see many different tests she has to take when she is meeting with her neurologist. In the film we only see one test. We don't see he have to count backwards from 100 by 6, we don't see her having to draw a clock then feeling bad because she made the clock too large, we also don't get to see the conversation play out in depth between the neurologist, Alice, and John. By cutting out these tests we also don't get to see the struggle John is having with accepting Alice's diagnosis and the neurologist suggesting he join a support group. In the movie it seems that John just accepts the diagnosis and although we see a little bit of a struggle, he isn't as much of a jerk as he is in the book.

They also cut out Alice starting her own support group of people in their late 40's early 50's who have EOAD. This was a huge part in the book and I'm really upset they didn't keep it in the movie. It was an outlet for Alice to be able to talk with people who understand exactly how she is feeling and what she is experiencing. The movie also didn't incorporate her grad student, Dan. I understand the decision to cut out the parts with Dan, it was still disappointing to not see her continued work with him throughout the movie.

Those were the main complaints I had with the movie. As of finishing this post it has been about a week since I have seen the movie and everything else isn't as fresh. There were other changes that bugged me, such as: Anna being rude to her mother, Lydia not taking acting classes, John not buying movies for Alice when she can no longer hold onto the plot of a book, the kids making home videos of memories they had with their mother, and other minor details that really had no significant effect on the movie one way or another but were noticeable for someone who had JUST finished reading the book.

All that being said, there were a few changes I enjoyed. I liked the fact that they had Alice use a highlighter while reading her speech, it made that scene more realistic then just her having a good day and being able to concentrate well enough to get through the speech. I also liked that Alice recorded herself for her "Butterfly" folder instead of just writing it out, that scene in the movie was powerful and really well done. I also enjoyed that Alice was constantly Skyping with her daughter Lydia. The book having taken place in the early 2000's Skype wasn't involved in her keeping contact with Lydia so I enjoyed that they were able to include that.

Again, I didn't hate this movie, I just feel they could have done a better job with the script and overall direction.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed this post.

Until next time,

G