Take Shelter
Plot Summary:
This is a story about a construction worker, Curtis, who
lived with his wife and his deaf daughter, Hannah in a small town of Ohio. His He
had a fulfilling life until one day he experienced reoccurring, terrifying,
getting worse-and-worse nightmares and day visions of the coming tornado,
bringing harm to all his love ones. He kept everything to himself while
redirecting his anxiety into the obsessive building of expensive tornado
shelter in his backyard, resulting in the strains to his family, marriage, and
most of all how society perceive him. Take Shelter gradually portrayed Curtis’s
condition of Brief Psychotic Disorder.
Disorder:
Brief
Psychotic Disorder is the presence of delusions
and hallucinations, disorganized speech or behavior. Distinguishing features is
that it last for more than one day but less than one month, like a time-limited
and non-reoccurring schizophrenia (Student Notes).
From the movie, Curtis was out of touch
with reality and was not able to separate his dream sequences from reality
anymore because they become more and more vivid and real, leaving him physical
effects such as bedwetting, seizure, pain, bleeding, and injury. Those
nightmares include a huge tornado approaching, his own dog attacking him, his
colleague and his wife violently attacking him, invaders kidnapping his
daughter. Eventually his dreams came to dictate his waking actions as paranoia. He also experienced auditory and visual
hallucination. He heard claps of thunders, saw groups of dark scary-looking
clouds from time to time throughout the movie and saw thousands of migrating
birds and bats when no one else does. Strange and maladaptive behaviors include
his obsess with renovating the tornado shelter, spending all his savings for
the daughter’s education, taking away health insurance money that was supposed
to be for the daughter’s surgery, taking out unable-to-pay-back loan from the
bank. He also borrowed large tools from construction job that made him ended up
getting fired. Last, the whole movie demonstrated
that the disorder does not last more than a month, as an evidence for his brief
psychotic disorder. According to my interpretation, the huge storm finally
happened because of the wife reactions toward the end when she really saw the
approaching tornado, proving that it was not the Curtis’s delusion. His
condition could be cured afterward, if not, then that could be progress to be
schizophrenia.
Causes:
Biological – Curtis clearly have inherit that biological
predisposition to psychotic disorder from his mother who paranoid schizophrenic.
The disorder developed later in his adulthood after facing stressors including
the daughter deafness, finance difficulties, etc. (2) Also, He could have
abnormal activity or interactions of neurotransmitters like dopamine and
serotonin.
Cognitive – People develop delusional thinking when they
try to understand their unusual experiences, strange biological sensation.
Curtis start with experiencing nightmares and vision and related hallucinations
as a result from biological sensation, and later try to understand and make
sense of those strange sensations, and eventually develop into
misinterpretations and delusion that the terrible thunderstorm is really coming.
Psychodynamic – According to Freud, it develops from the
regression to a pre-ego stage and effort to reestablish ego control (Comer, 2010) .
Treatment:
Biological –
Antipsychotic drugs can reduce delusion and hallucination those symptoms.
Psychotherapy – Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is to guide patients to more accurate
interpretation of their experiences.
Family & Social Therapy can also be very effective. People with the disorder can
actually discuss with others their real-life problem.
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