Pschycological Disorders (Jakob)

As part of our film opening, our main character will suffer from hallucinations as a result of a past incident resulting in the death of a woman. Following are the results of my (Jakob's) research into what underlying problem could cause this.


PANIC DISORDER

In Panic Disorder, a person suffers brief attacks of terror and apprehension, often marked by trembling, shaking, confusion, nausea and difficulty breathing. These panic attacks can be triggered by stress, fear, or even exercise, although the specific cause is not always apparent.

This suits our character in some ways: the terror and panicking works perfectly, and the fact that it can be triggered by stress, although vague, fits our character's back story. However, the main problem with using this would be that panic attacks do not induce or include hallucinations.


POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

This is an extreme anxiety disorder which results from a traumatic experience. It can result from an extreme situation, or even a serious accident. Common symptoms include flashbacks, avoidant behaviours, and depression.

Again, this works in that it's caused by a traumatic experience, but does not induce hallucinations. The Fashbacks could be very useful, as flashbacks are part of our storytelling method. If we choose this as our character's ailment the flashbacks could change from being purely for the sake of the viewer, at least on the surface, and become a symptom and expression of the character, which could prove interesting.


PSYCHOSIS

Psychosis is a generic psychriatric term for a mental state often described as a loss of contact with normality. Functional causes of psychosis include the following:

• Brain tumors
• Drug abuse
• Brain Damage
• Schizophrenia
• Bipolar disorder
• Severe Clinical Depression
• Severe psychosocial stress
• Sleep deprivation
• EXPOSURE TO SOME TRAUMATIC EVENT

Two interesting and relevant points here: Firstly, according to chemistrydaily.com, 'people experiencing a psychotic episode in the context of depression may experience persecutory or self-blaming delusions or hallucinations', i.e exactly what we want our character to experience.

Secondly, en.academic.ru states that "A history of psychologically traumatic events, and the recent experience of a stressful event, can both contribute to the development of psychosis", i.e, exactly why we want our character to be hallucinating.

CONCLUSION

Our character is suffering self-blaming hallucinations as part of a psychotic episode triggered by a recent traumatic experience.

On film, we will show the hallucinations by contrasting P.O.V shots from our protagonist in which he has blood on his hands with P.O.V shots by passers-by in which his hands are clean. The traumatic experience will be portrayed with the use of crime scene photographs of a murdered woman at the beginning of our opening, and his guilt implicated by the literal blood on his hands. A sense of panic will be created with sound effects such as heavy breathing and by fast editing.