Reality in fiction

Fiction is, often, a mirror to reality. Mental disorders are a reality in the world of fiction

By Sneha Pillai
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Calvin

Bill Watterson's masterpiece, Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, is based on the friendship between the six-year-old boy and his best friend Hobbes, a stuffed tiger. Together, Calvin and Hobbes wander in the woods, discuss annoying adults, ponder over the meaning of life, fight monsters and aliens and play pranks on Calvin's neighbour, Susie. But, Hobbes comes alive only with Calvin; for others he is just a stuffed toy. Does it ring a bell? Calvin could be suffering from schizophrenia. After all, he is delusional, constantly hallucinates about his adventures with his stuffed toy, believes other people can read his mind and are trying to harm him, and fails to make any sense to people around him.

Minions

Yellow, odd-eyed Minions are tiny, single-celled creatures that live to serve evil masters. However, they could rarely help their masters, not only because they are too cute to execute anything evil, but also because they simply cannot stay focused to execute any mission at all. All they can manage is to be effortlessly adorable. Their silly antics, curiosity and tendency to goof up almost every situation make them one of the most loved fictional characters. Minions are hyperactive, playful, impulsive and easily distracted, which are the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Ariel

Who would not fall in love with one of the most endearing Disney princesses, Ariel? This curious little mermaid oozes innocent beauty, personifies undying love and well, eh, cannot stop herself from hoarding. Yes, she has a cave full of random human stuff she picks from wrecked ships, most of which serve no purpose. She is also emotionally attached to her collection, so much that she refuses to part with them, even if it means angering her father. This condition is called disposophobia, which translates to intense fear of losing things.

Devdas

A name that has almost become synonymous with depression, is a classic tale of a dejected, lovelorn man who turns to alcohol for comfort, and soon turns into an addict, eventually succumbing to liver cirrhosis. Devdas exhibits all symptoms of major depressive disorder. He is constantly depressed, rarely shows interest in anything, has an overwhelming sense of guilt and suffers recurrent thoughts of death and suicide. Also, living in a constant sense of doom, he finds it impossible to develop and sustain interpersonal relationships, thus forcing him to lead a solitary life.

Bhaskor Banerjee

Ask Bhaskor Banerjee, Piku's dad, what life means to him? His prompt answer would be to get his bowel movement correct. This 70-year-old spends his days obsessing over his 'motion' and a slight change in colour or texture of his poop is enough for him to leave urgent messages with his daughter's secretary at work and call his doctor. Besides voicing his constipation woes, Banerjee checks his body temperature four times a day and hides salt from the domestic help to avoid it in food as a precaution against hypertension. He clearly suffers illness anxiety disorder, which means worrying excessively about one's health and believing that normal body sensations could be symptoms of severe illness.

Jay Gatsby

After spending his childhood in despairing poverty and despising every bit of it, ambitious Jay Gatsby, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, achieves all he aimed for and more by wrong means. Gatsby, who always wanted to be fabulously rich and perfect in all sense, becomes a victim of his own inflated ego ideal and succumbs to his sense of entitlement. Larger-than-life Gatsby idealises self to an extreme degree of perfection and omnipotency, thus showing the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. The condition leads him to believe he is special and has extraordinary power over others. Also, he gives high importance to status and how he is perceived in society.

Holden Caulfield

Teenager protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, speaks to the reader directly from a mental asylum. Holden resists his entry into adulthood as he feels it means losing innocence and making lots of compromises. However, what makes him different from any other teenager of his age are his noticeable peculiarities and negative take on life as a whole. Having witnessed the death of people he was close to, he seems to have developed post traumatic stress disorder, symptoms of which include reliving the trauma over and over. Remember how obsessed Holden seems to be with the topic of death? In the book, Holden vividly describes his best friend killing himself and also gives a detailed description of his brother's death to the readers, reliving the trauma each time.

Unnamed narrator

The unnamed narrator of Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, is diagnosed with insomnia. As a desperate attempt to get some relief from his condition, on the advice of his doctor, he starts attending the meetings of support groups for patients with terminal diseases until he befriends a soap salesman, Tyler Durden. Together, they form a fight club as a radical form of psychotherapy. Tyler gradually starts taking control of the narrator's life, who later realises that he is Tyler. Confused? Well, that's how it is with people suffering from dissociative identity disorder, a severe condition, in which two or more distinct identities exist within the same person. These identities alternately take control of an individual, who also experiences blackouts and memory loss.

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