Mental Health Representation in the movie Silver Linings Playbook

December 5, 2016

The movie Silver Linings Playbook features a character named Pat Solatano, who just got out of an 8 month stay in a mental institution after he had a raging bipolar episode when he caught his wife cheating on him. The movie begins with his mom taking him out of the mental institution to live with her and his father on the condition that Pat go to therapy, take his medication, and remain his parent’s responsibility. The main character immediately becomes determined to win his soon-to-be-ex wife back after she got a restraining order on him for nearly killing her lover. Pat is a young adult who is in the intimacy versus isolation crisis of his life. Intimacy versus isolation is one of Erik Erikson’s stages in his theory of development that takes place in early adulthood and focuses on our need to form strong and lasting relationships with others versus winding up feeling alone and isolated with no one to turn to for support. This stage is navigated after completing the ego-identity versus role confusion, and it can be problematic for Erikson’s intimacy stage when someone fails to complete the identity phase. 

Gaining and keeping not only strong intimate relationships but strong friendships with other people is an important part of early adulthood as we begin to find our place and purpose in the world. Having a solid foundation of friendship and love is important as we get older and carries into the next stage of life called generativity versus stagnation (Erickson, 1963). Silver Linings Playbook focuses on Pat’s obsession with getting back into a marriage that was not all that great to begin with, while resisting the attraction and likeness that he feels with the character Tiffany, who also recently lost her spouse. It also highlights Pat’s struggles to control himself and come to terms with his condition, the toll his disorder takes on himself and his family, and how alike he and his father are at times. The relationship with his father and mother as well as a couple close friends, and especially his friend Tiffany are rocky but eventually strengthened throughout the movie.

Bipolar disorder is a large spectrum, and anyone with the disorder may not have the same experiences or the same realities as others with the disorder, but there are several typical effects of the disorder on the majority of patients. One regular effect of bipolar disorder is the lack of maintaining appropriateness in social situations. Depending on what stage of the bipolar cycles a person is in, they can be extremely poor at interpreting social cues and exhibiting empathy towards their partners or just people in general. In this movie, Pat apologizes for blurting out inappropriate things and also for saying things he doesn’t mean and admits that he “has no filter” (Russell, 2012). This is a behavior common among bipolar patients and would obviously have a negative affect on not only a marriage but friendships and other social interactions. While navigating the intimacy versus isolation stage of life is going to have its challenges for every young adult, it is likely even harder for someone who suffers from a disorder that impairs their social function and can cause their relationships to deteriorate. A paper by (MacQueen, 2001) says that bipolar patients have severe difficulties in maintaining a normal life and that up to 60% of bipolar patients are unable to continue in the same social and employment paths after an extreme episode (which is what Pat suffered when he caught his wife cheating). This means that forming intimate relationships and strong friendships can be even harder than normal for someone with bipolar disorder.

The poor social skill that bipolar patients typically exhibit is referred to by (Baez, 2012) as “contextual social cognition impairment.” A study was performed in which patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders were evaluated on their social cognition and general knowledge skills. While schizophrenia was found to have the strongest deficit in social cognition skills, bipolar still had a significant deficit compared to the healthy control group. In addition, it was found that both schizophrenic and bipolar patients scored around the same level as the healthy control group when tested on their general knowledge. The bipolar and schizophrenic patients were also found to have significantly lower scores in the ability to feel and express empathy compared to the healthy control group (Baez, 2012). From these results I can infer that patients with bipolar disorder can, not only act and speak with “no filter,” as Pat in the movie puts it, but can also (at least sometimes) be utterly unaware and uncaring when their behavior is affecting the people around them negatively. The implications of this study would include the possibility that bipolar disorder has negative effects on relationships, including those that the bipolar patients may not be fully aware of.

Erik Erikson’s stage of intimacy versus isolation theorizes that we have a developmental need to form strong relationships in early adulthood. This need is likely the reason that Pat becomes so obsessed with winning his cheating ex back. He becomes do desperate to patch up his relationship that he is willing to risk his freedom just to contact his wife through the restraining order that she had put on him. Pat feels a strong desire to get his wife back so he can once again be a part of a relationship. After he gets out of the mental institution and his parents tell him that Nikki is gone, he refuses to believe them and heed their advice to move on and accept that she is gone. Instead, Pat convinces himself that if he can keep fit and read all the books that she is teaching to her high school English class, then she will magically lift the restraining order and come back to their poor marriage. At one point, Pat describes his marriage as being normal, while simultaneously saying that he and his wife argued a lot, went for weeks without talking, and wanted to change almost everything about each other. He describes him and his wife as having an “unconventional chemistry that makes other people feel awkward.” And also says that his mood swings really bothered her (Russell, 2012). I would infer that his marriage was an unhealthy one, due, at least partly, to the behavioral effects of his disorder, but probably also due to his wife’s lack of faithfulness. Pat also displays the typical bipolar symptom of not realizing that the behavior in his relationship was abnormal, as well as not realizing that his marriage was displaying many characteristics of being unhealthy.

Also accentuated in the movie is the way Pat and his father are very alike. He and his parents have a loving relationship for the most part, but it is far from perfect. In the movie, Pat and his father eventually agree that they aren’t much different. Pat’s father is out of a job, betting on football games to make money, is obsessed with luck, and claims that Pat is his good luck charm. This actually adds much tension to the relationship, because Pat’s father ends up blaming him when the team he is betting on does not win and he loses money. The intimacy versus isolation stage is not limited to relationships with an intimate partner, and it is obvious throughout the movie that Pat is also affected when his relationship with his parents turns rocky. This adds stress to Pat’s need to rekindle his broken marriage in order to feel as though he is successfully navigating the intimacy versus isolation crisis (Erikson, 1963).

Many people who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder can lead fairly normal lives with the help of therapy and medication, and the support of loved ones. The problem is that bipolar disorder can have very negative effects on caregivers and loved ones of those who have bipolar disorder. In marriages where one partner has been diagnosed with a bipolar spectrum disorder, up to 90% of these marriages do not last (Watson, 2016). Although much has been learned about bipolar disorder in recent years, psychologists have been trying to learn more about it for many years. Even back in 1981, when well partners of bipolar patients were asked their thoughts on their marriage, 53% said they would not have married, if they had been aware of the full burden of taking on and committing to a relationship with someone who has bipolar disorder. Of the bipolar partners in these same relationships, only 5% of the patients said that they would not have married had they known the effects that their bipolar disorder would have on their partners (Targum, 1981). This indicates that people with bipolar disorder do not have the strongest sense of how their mood swings and manic/depressive changes can cause hurt, confusion, and stress for their partners. While this varies from person to person, the character Pat in Silver Linings Playbook doesn’t seem to understand that his marriage was unhealthy and that his wife had been extremely unhappy with him.

Pat is struggling with the need to feel like he is part of a strong relationship, but also struggling to come to terms with the fact that the relationship he originally had was not as strong as he thought. For most of the movie, Pat seems to think his current wife is his only option for completing the stage of intimacy versus isolation. He becomes so obsessed with winning her back that he makes an arrangement with one of his wife’s acquaintances Tiffany, who is recently widowed and suffering from depression and possibly borderline personality disorder. Tiffany agrees to break the law and restraining order to bring a letter from Pat to his soon-to-be ex wife, and he agrees to help her by becoming her partner in a dance competition. Tiffany is in therapy herself and seems to be very understanding of Pat’s condition compared to some people.

One of Pat’s triggers is the song that was playing (his and his wife’s wedding song) when he came home to find his wife in the shower with her lover. Pat says that when he gets upset he hears the song even though it isn’t playing (Russell, 2012). Tiffany is able to recognize when the song starts playing in his head as he’s getting upset and pulls him out of his trance. While Tiffany has issues of her own, she still manages to be able to “snap him out of it” at times when he is going over the edge and provides both forgiveness and bluntness that help Pat in accepting and dealing with his disorder. Once Pat overcomes his obsession with getting back into his bad marriage, he realizes that Tiffany accepts his bipolar disorder more than his wife did.

This acceptance of his bipolar disorder and Tiffany’s ability to help him are qualities crucial in forming a long term intimate relationship. Her willingness to help him in addition to trying to stop him from damaging his life further seems to sober Pat up enough to realize that his chasing his cheating wife is a lost cause, and by the end of the movie it is implied that he and Tiffany form a strong relationship. Once Pat was able to accept that his marriage was over and that his soon-to-be-ex doesn’t actually care for him, he is able to move on. Pat’s parents no longer have to worry about him trying to break his restraining order and their relationship becomes stronger once he gets over his obsession with patching up his unhealthy marriage. Pat is also able to see that Tiffany cares more for him than his wife did, which allows him to finally try to form a relationship with her and continue forward in navigating his developmental stage.












References:

Baez, S., Herrera, E., Villarin, L., Theil, D., Gonzalez- Gadea M. L (2013). Contextual

Social Cognition Impairments in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder. PLOS ONE 8:3. Retrieved from: www.journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057664

Erikson, E. H. Childhood and Society; The Landmark Work on the Social Significance of

Childhood. Published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. p 250-280

MacQueen, G. M., Young, L. T., Joffe, R. T. (2001, March). A review of psychosocial

outcome in patients with bipolar disorder. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 103:3 p163-170. Retrieved from:

www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0447.2001.00059.x/ful

Russell, David O., et al. Silver Linings Playbook. Weinstein Company, 2012.

Targum, S. D., Dibble, E. D., Davenport, Y. D. (1981, May). The Family Attitudes

Questionnaire: Patient’s and Spouse’s Views of Bipolar Illness. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1981; 38(5):562-568. Retrieved from:

www.jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/492550

Watson, S. (2016). Bipolar Romantic Relationships: Dating and Marriage. WebMD,

LLC. Retrieved from: www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/bipolar-romantic-relationships-dating-and-marraige