MovieChat Forums > Prozac Nation (2003) Discussion > Not all depressed people are manipulativ...

Not all depressed people are manipulative and whiny...

posted 15 years ago by LextheXFile
15 replies | jump to latest

As someone who has had a lot of depression in my life, on and off, I can relate- its horrible. You just want to sleep and you lose pleasure in almost everything. However, maybe its just my personality, but I never treated people like Wurtzel's character in this movie. She is snotty, whiny and seems to want everyone to pity her but doesn't seem interested in really getting better- its like she wants the pills or something to do all the work of getting better for her.

Compare this to a movie like "A Beautiful Mind"- John Nash was tormented and terrified and acted irrationally (yes, I know he was schziophrenic and not simply depressed) but that movie had so much more depth to me! Considering how bright Wurtzel is portrayed to be, I would've liked this more if she had held things together a little more and stopped treating other people like dirt. Viktor Frankl wrote "Man's search for meaning" after his experiences in death camps during world war 2 and there is not an ounce of self pity in his work.

I think, yes, Wurtzel was bright and depressed and yes, Daddy left (how many people here grew up with divorce or in foster care or in a single parent family or with abuse.... I mean.... LOTS!) but I also think she was spoiled and self indulgent. I was expecting an interesting look at depression and a movie about the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity, and what I got was a lot of self pitying and the message that if you're depressed, its fine to treat others like crap because you're DEPRESSED. Ahhhh!

"Man is a social animal who despises his fellow man" ~ Delacroix

[–] bugsboom 15 years ago

something that you're forgetting here: depressed people ARE self-indulgent! they are too wrapped up in their own misery to think clearly about others. Empathy is non-existent with depressed people. Tell someone who is depressed that there are other people who have it worse than them and they'll just scoff at you. Self-pitying is tantamount. That's the very nature of depression: poor me, i hate my life, nobody understands, etc. I'm saying this as someone who has dealt with severe depression nearly all my life. I've been in and out of therapy, on different meds (including Prozac which was the only one that worked.) You can't have met many depressed people or bothered to get into their heads in terms of selfish behaviors. The Wurtzel in this film comes off as manipulative and whiny, yes, but to me, she seems more self-destructive. It's as though she is deliberately driving these people off so her fears can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: that nobody truly cares about her and that everyone will eventually leave her. That is exactly how I've felt in the past and I saw myself in those self-destructive behaviors displayed in the film. Please open your mind before making such sweeping generalizations.

I'm here to kick ass and chew gum and I'm all out of gum!

[–] ShrinkMD 14 years ago

I agree that her actions are meant to be self-destructive and are driven by a deep rooted self-hatred. It often happens in depression. But I couldn't disagree with you more that all depressed people are self-indulgent, self-pitying creatures who cannot and will not acknowledge that people other than themselves feel pain. Depression has many faces; it's not just about feeling down. It can manifest itself as apathy, hopelessness, an inability to experience pleasure.

You tell others to open their minds up before making sweeping generalizations, yet you do the same exact thing. You're implying that because you've struggled with depression (and I don't mean to detract from the pain you must have experienced) you know exactly how others feel. Everyone experiences illness differently. Especially something as variable and ill-defined as mental illness. And depressed people can certainly feel empathy. As a mental health practitioner and someone who has also personally struggled with treatment-refractory depression, I can say that at least for me the thought that there are other people who have it worse than me just made me feel even more depressed. People have said it to me many times and I never scoff, because intellectually I know it to be true. But when I'm depressed statements like that offer little to no consolation. Not because I AM selfish and the world is all about me, me, me, but because it makes me FEEL that way and the self-hatred only becomes stronger.

[–] Yinky 15 years ago

I tend to agree with bugs. It's different for everyone, but the main theme is me, me, me. Depressed people think about nothing but their own suffering. I mean, look at your post! You're talking about how self-indulgent you're not. Really? Then why'd you post?

So insatiableexphile...not to pick a fight, but how do you know you've never treated anyone the way Wurtzel did? My best friend of 30 years suffers from BPD and she is Bi-polar, and she has said/done some of the most horrendously cruel things to the ones who love her....and when you talk to her, the things she says/does are all someone else's fault. The scene where Wurtzel says her friend "just couldn't know" what it was like to love someone...that actually gave me chills. My friend could be that blazenly cruel. She would act like, well, "that's what you get" when misfortuned found ANYONE. She said that about a friend of ours who's husband was murdered. "Well, that's what she gets." Because this girl wore a bikini and "shook her p*ssy" at my friend's boyfriend. (I was there, she didn't flirt in the least, but she had bigger boobs than my friend.)

But anyway, I don't think this movie gave the impression that it's ok to treat everyone like crap if you're depressed. She came off as a total P.I.T.A. to me; I didn't feel sorry for her at all. And I think that's what Wurtzel was getting at--the book was no holds barred "look at what an a$$hole I was." I think this book/film is important because it shows the side of mental illness that plagues the person's family/friends. I am really sick of the stoic person who takes care of the crazy person. I also had an uncle that was schizophrenic (sp?). It was hard not to get pissed off when he was talking to his "voices" and gigglining at Christmas Dinner or smacking his mother's a$$ when she was doing the dishes.

Seriously, if you suffer from mental illness, that doesn't mean you're not an *beep*

[–] Ais11 14 years ago

It's true that people who suffer from depression can take it out on those around them, but it's not true for everyone. I've suffered from depression for a huge part of my life, and every time I go through a phase I watch myself very carefully to see how I'm treating those around me. I mostly try to act as I normally would, and if I feel that I wouldn't be able to, that I might (even just by being unable to effectively hide my depression) affect someone else, I stay away from people that day. I watched this with the same expectations as the OP, but was very disappointed that instead of showing a mature person dealing with depression, it portrayed what amounted to a spoilt brat who didn't even have vague impulse control! I have felt that destructive tendency Wurtzel displays in the film, but it's not that difficult to control it.

[–] LextheXFile 14 years ago

"
So insatiableexphile...not to pick a fight, but how do you know you've never treated anyone the way Wurtzel did? My best friend of 30 years suffers from BPD and she is Bi-polar, and she has said/done some of the most horrendously cruel things to the ones who love her....and when you talk to her, the things she says/does are all someone else's fault. The scene where Wurtzel says her friend "just couldn't know" what it was like to love someone...that actually gave me chills. My friend could be that blazenly cruel. She would act like, well, "that's what you get" when misfortuned found ANYONE. She said that about a friend of ours who's husband was murdered. "Well, that's what she gets." Because this girl wore a bikini and "shook her p*ssy" at my friend's boyfriend. (I was there, she didn't flirt in the least, but she had bigger boobs than my friend.) "

I know I have never acted like that because I am NOT BPD or Bipolar. They market this movie as if it's ONLY about depression, and it does pertain to depression, but it's more about someone with a personality disorder that is depressed.

The BPD might be the reason why your best friend has said and done such cruel things... my guess is it's the personality disorder, not the depression. that caused Wurtzel (and your friend) to be so cruel. When I was depressed I was lacking the physical energy to do much (got out of breath a lot, slept a lot, didn't laugh as much- my personality was more or less the same, I just felt like I had a weird flu that wouldn't go away and felt exhausted).

I know that if you suffer from mental illness you can still be a "beep". I never said otherwise. I just was saying that I think the movie should have been called something else, because by calling it Prozac nation (and it's true, a lot of people are on SSRIs) and then telling her story, Wurtzel is indirectly suggesting that the entire "nation" of "depression sufferers" will have the labile moods and cruel personality traits she does.

"I want to Believe"- <3 Fox Mulder, The X-Files

[–] hppg 13 years ago

>"My friend could be that blazenly cruel. She would act like, well, "that's what you get" when misfortuned found ANYONE. She said that about a friend of ours who's husband was murdered. "Well, that's what she gets." Because this girl wore a bikini and "shook her p*ssy" at my friend's boyfriend. (I was there, she didn't flirt in the least, but she had bigger boobs than my friend.)"

Um that sounds just bitchy, is bipolar really an excuse for that? It's crazy but not bipolar crazy, I'm thinking more sociopathic.

[–] Yinky 13 years ago

She has BPD, actually. Way crazier than a lil ole Bipolar. She's not together enough to be sociopathic. She bounces off the walls.

[–] Gabe1972 15 years ago

Everybody is different. Just because many people deal with depression doesn't mean they are all going to act the same way. This was just the way SHE acted, not everyone.

If your nose runs and your feet smell, you were built upside down.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] OCOKA 14 years ago

Although she may have been suffering from depression, and many speculate that she had Borderline Personality Disorder as well, I would say that her major clinical diagnosis is Narcissistic Personality Disorder, owing to the fact that she is extremely high functioning, lucid in all her interactions, and seems to enjoy manipulating and using people for her own short-sighted gains. Not only are narcissists the most difficult of mental patients to deal with, they almost have no recovery rate, as their accomplishments in the academic and professional world (ivy league and law school grad, as well as author), tend to overshadow or thwart any recommendations for serious counseling, treatment or real behavorial change. IMO, narcissists are better served not through anti-psychotic medication and other behavorial meds, but rather through long-term cognitive therapy.

[–] LextheXFile 14 years ago

OCOKA, yes, she had many traits of NPD. She reminded me a little bit of Diane Downs (if you watch the interviews with Downs on youtube). Your concise response was what I was getting at, thank you for your post. It disturbed me that the movie was marketed as if it was only about a depressed person, and she turns out to be this creepy, cruel, self absorbed banshee... you get my point. I agree with you too, narcissists are better served by therapy, but most narcissists will never admit they ARE narcissists (if they consciously know it) and will blame all their problems on something more socially acceptable like "depression" or "my boyfriend/girlfriend" or something else that lets them blame their own actions on factors outside their "control". I think that is the reason why, in this thread alone, so many people think that people with "depression" are hurtful, can't be helped, etc... the waters are being muddied.

But yeah, thank you for your post.

To the readers that think that their depressed friends/loved ones that are hurtful, self-absorbed and spoiled to this degree are "only" suffering from depression... nope. They have problems in ADDITION to depression.

"I want to Believe"- <3 Fox Mulder, The X-Files

[–] Yinky 14 years ago

I agree with you. My friend was mean because of the BPD. And she is pretty narcissistic on top of it.

I think she called the book/movie Prozac Nation, because, if you read the book, she goes into the history of anti-depression medication. She also thinks that we are over-medicating society, ie, when you're depressed you just take a pill and everything is wonderful. (She doesn't believe that, but that was the jist of her writing.) There is a rather large section of the book devoted to this sort of historical treatise that isn't really covered in the flick.

[–] hppg 13 years ago

I think you're right. I read a review complaining about how awful the lead was. Then I watched it and I felt the same. Whine, whine, my life is sooooo hard. That was before I got depressed...then it happened to me. And before that I had some idea but didn't fully understand what it was like. Wow...eye opening. But yeah, at the same time I still wasn't that bratty, and she didn't seem much like taking care of herself. I suppose that's depression plus being a teenager (at least I was early 20s)? I dunno, I haven't seen it for a while, I think I would be more tolerant now having been through it, but the film/book is still not really a good piece of entertainment!

Part of the problem with my depression was that I knew I didn't have things TOO bad. I've had worse luck than most of my friends, which is hard and annoying, but compared to a lot of people, it's just not even worth complaining about. And the guilt that compounded about this just made it a worse spiral. Plus I get more hyper-empathic when I'm depressed. I still can't watch the news because it makes me cry for hours, and a lot of the reason I was distressed was because of cruelty elsewhere in the world that made me want to kill myself.

[–] drowninghero 11 years ago

Can we all just admit already that this movie was about an attractive woman with daddy issues. The end.

[–] Galagatron 11 years ago

Not all depressed people are manipulative and whiny, but not all the people claiming to be the pop trendy illness of depression are actually clinically depressed.