5 Great Movies About Psychological Disorders

Psychological disorders affect a large number of people in the world population : about 450 million people suffer from some type of disorder, that is, one in four people suffer from some mental illness during their lifetime.

Therefore, screenwriters have created several protagonists with psychological disorders in film history.

These disorders add more complexity and richness to the characters, in addition to showing us, in some cases, aspects of the disease that we didn’t know about.

Suspense, drama, romantic comedy, science fiction… We propose here five films about psychological disorders of various types, which you may not have seen and which are worth knowing.

Psychological disorders in cinema

1- The snake’s pit (Anatole Litvak, 1948)

This film is based on an autobiographical bestseller written by Mary Jane Ward in 1946, where she recounts her experiences when she was committed to a public asylum.

Olivia de Havilland brilliantly embodies this newlywed writer who was admitted to a mental hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown shortly after her marriage.

This treatment ends up being worse than the disease due to the mistreatment and the terrible conditions to which the inmates were subjected. This contributed to aggravate his disturbed mental state.

‘Serpent’s Pit’ was the first Hollywood film to openly talk about the plight of patients in post-war psychiatric institutions and was shot in such a way that it was nominated for six Academy Awards. Due to the controversy it generated at the time, only one won.

2- The Fisherman of Illusions (Terry Gilliam, 1991)

In this comedy drama Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is an arrogant radio announcer who is used to insulting listeners who call his program and ends up unwittingly leading a listener to commit a massacre in a bar, killing seven people.

The guilt associated with his narcissism precipitates emotional stress: he leaves his radio job and becomes an embittered man. Three years later he meets Jack Parry (Robin Williams), an unhinged and delusional tramp who coincidentally lost his wife in the bar massacre.

Jack forms an exceptional pair with Parry, who suffers from severe post-traumatic psychosis and persecutory delusions (paranoia) as well as schizophrenia.

This moving, hilarious and sensitive story of friendship between two broken men is the starting point for creating an irresistible modern fable in New York that takes a bitter look at the paradoxes of modern life, starting with the violence of capable urban stress. of devastating lives, aliens in their homicidal and inconsequential dementia.

3- Benny and Joon- Hearts in conflict (Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1993)

The cinema presented us with some romantic comedies where there is a lot of love between people with psychological disorders. Benny and Joon are proof of that: Benny (Aidam Quinn) takes care of his sister Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), who suffers from schizophrenia.

After losing a bet at a poker table, they are forced to socialize with Sam (Johnny Depp), a spoiled and extravagant guy. But Sam, in his special way, ends up transforming their lives and Sam and Joon end up falling in love with each other.

4- Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swaze, it recounts the unusual experiences of a schizophrenic, sleepwalking teenager (played by Gyllenhaal) who has a great imagination and intelligence.

Donnie escapes death thanks to the appearance of a giant and demonic rabbit named Frank, who in addition to giving him supernatural powers, predicts exactly the day when the world will end.

‘Donnie Darko’ did not debut in theaters due to the attack by the twin towers, but that didn’t stop its success afterwards.

5- The shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

It is a dramatic and suspenseful film that tells the life of Curtis LaForche, a family man who lives in a small town in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Curtis begins to have strange and apocalyptic dreams and, as his life falls apart, he decides to build a storm shelter in his backyard.

His visions and his increasingly strange behavior make him question whether the real reason for building the shelter is to protect his family from the dangers he senses or from himself.

With these five magnificent movies we hope you’ll go crazy, but crazy about cinema! Enjoy!