NRS2342: Schizophrenia and Mental Health Analysis of the Movie Birdy

This essay provides a detailed analysis of schizophrenia as portrayed in the movie Birdy. It begins by outlining the storyline and introduces the main character, Birdy, who exhibits symptoms consistent with schizophrenia, including delusions and a detachment from reality. The essay then delves into the symptoms of schizophrenia, categorizing them into positive, negative, disorganization, and impaired cognition, and highlighting how these symptoms manifest in Birdy's behavior. The impact of schizophrenia on individuals and their families, including psychological, socio-cultural, and spiritual dimensions, is also discussed, along with the rising prevalence of the disorder. Based on the analysis, the essay identifies two nursing diagnoses: delusional thought patterns and impaired social interaction, and proposes appropriate nursing interventions such as active listening, distraction techniques, and social skills training. Furthermore, the essay explores pharmacological and cognitive therapy treatment options, including their associated side effects. Finally, the essay concludes with recommendations for managing the illness, such as building resilience and engaging in distracting activities. The essay effectively uses the movie Birdy to illustrate the challenges faced by those with schizophrenia and offers insights into effective care strategies.

Schizophrenia disorder
Mental Health Nursing
NRS2342
Semester1, 2012-2018
Movie: Birdy
Course Instructor: Mr. Stephen Ward
Referencing style: APA 6th edition
Word count:

The Birdy movie is about two friends, Birdy and Al Columbato. Birdy had a fascination
for birds and flying and he had also built a new aviary in his bed. Due to certain life experiences,
he always wanted to escape from reality and expressed his desire to be born as a bird. After the
Vietnam war, Birdy was emotionally scarred and confined to mental hospital. He was almost in
comatose state. However, his friend Al made several attempts to reduce his dissociative
behavior. In the end, Birdy escaped to another level of the roof as he was found jumping off the
roof of the hospital just like a bird (Birdy, 2017). . Considering this storyline of the movie Birdy,
the essay provides a detailed insight into the mental illness depicted in the movie and discusses
in detail about the symptoms, impact of the mental illness, nursing interventions and treatment
options available for the mental illness.
After the analysis of the main character of the movie Birdy, it has been found that the
mental illness of schizophrenia was depicted in the movie. Schizophrenia is a chronic mental
disorder that has an impact on a person’s feeling, thinking and behavior. It is often characterized
by episodes when patients cannot make differentiate between real and unreal experience. Birdy
was also found to display bizarre behavior in the movie such as always imagining himself as a
bird and flying. They lose touch with reality and the brain disorder is often associated with
symptoms like hallucination, delusion, impaired memory, poor executive and motor functioning,
disorganized speech and disruptions in normal emotions and behavior (Frith, 2014). Similar
symptoms were also found in the Birdy as he often wanted to escape reality and had delusions.
He imagined himself as a bird.
The symptoms of schizophrenia are characterized into four categories such as positive
psychotic symptoms, negative symptoms, disorganization symptoms and impaired cognition.
The positive symptoms include distorted thoughts and beliefs, paranoid delusion and hearing
voices. It is called positive symptoms because this feelings did not existed in patient before they
were ill, however it get added to people’s psyche after the diagnosis of schizophrenia. On the
other hand, symptoms like losing the ability to speak, develop plans and find pleasure in life is
regarded as negative symptoms. It is named so because these symptoms exist in patients before
the diagnosis of the mental illness. Confused thinking and speech are examples of
disorganization symptoms and problem with attention and memory are example of impaired
cognition (Fusar-Poli et al., 2014). Positive symptoms like paranoid delusion were observed in

Birdy in the beginning before he went to the Vietnam War. However, other three symptoms was
found after he returned from Vietnam War and placed in mental hospital.
The Birdy has correctly depicted the sufferings and burden of schizophrenia on patients
and their immediate family members. Currently the prevalence of schizophrenia is also rising
worldwide. It is a devastating disorder which creates both health and cost burden for families and
community. The prevalence of schizophrenia worldwide is about 1.1% of the population above
18 years (Schizophrenia Symptoms, Patterns and Statistics and Patterns, 2017). This means at
least 51 million people worldwide are affected by schizophrenia. In case of UAE, it has been
found that about 50, 000 people suffer from schizophrenia. This means almost 1% of the UAE
population is affected by the mental disorder (Saberi, 2017). The stigma associated with
schizophrenia often exacerbates the sufferings of affected people.
Schizophrenia is regarded as a devastating mental disorder as it has psychological, socio-
cultural and spiritual impact on patients, their family members and the workplace of patients.
The diagnosis of schizophrenia is associated with great psychological impact as it leads to
cognitive dysfunction in patient. The deficits in attention, memory and executive functioning
have an impact on patient’s capability to perform daily life activities and such patients are prone
to many risks in their life (Hofer et al., 2017). Hence, they rely on family members and clinical
staffs to perform work as well as basis living skills. In addition, certain functional deficits in
patient affect socio-cultural life of people too. This can be said because people with
schizophrenia tend to have overlapping symptoms of depressive disorder. Impaired cognitive,
functional disability and poor ability to concentrate reduces self-esteem and confidence of
people. They often remained distressed contributing to the risk of depression (Balci et al., 2016).
They fail to cope with demands of social life and fail to fulfill interpersonal relationship with
partners or work staffs. They capability for full-time is affected and they lose sexual desire too.
Hence, stable relationship in social life does not exist and severely ill patients often enter into
social isolation. There are even more serious impact of social isolation and if this is not
addressed, patients starts developing suicide ideation too (Baek, 2014). Religion and spirituality
also has an impact on the life of schizophrenia patient. The relation between spirituality and
schizophrenia has influence on help seeking behavior, psychopathology as well as treatment
outcome for patient (Grover, Davuluri & Chakrabarti, 2014).

Based on the analysis of mental illness symptoms in the movie, two nursing diagnoses
have been identified. Firstly, the Birdy was found to have unreal thought process, delusion and
impaired thinking pattern evident from his continuous thoughts about birds and his wish to fly
like birds. He also wanted to escape from harsh realities of life. Another nursing diagnosis is that
Birdy has impaired social interaction evident from the fact he failed to enter into any close
relationship, had no sexual desire and has only friend.
In relation to the nursing diagnosis of delusional thought pattern in Birdy, two
important nursing interventions for Birdy includes active listening and communication with
patient to understand the intensity and duration of such behavior and use distractive methods to
prevent Birdy from focusing on delusion. Distraction strategies would serve to relax patient and
reinforce positive behavior to help him concentrate. While talking and listening to patient, it will
be necessary to give no judgment and just listen to identify thinking patterns and level of
disorder thinking in patient.
To address impaired social interaction in patient, social and coping skills nursing
intervention will be necessary for Birdy. The nurse can help the client to facilitate contact with
other people by developing good rapport with patient and helping him to identify alterative
course of action that would reduce his suffering. In order to encourage patient to increase social
contact, he will also be referred to any role model and encouraged to take part in group activities.
Schizophrenia patient also tend to enter into social isolation because they lack coping skills and
develop anxiety in social place. Hence, nurse can help to strengthen coping skill in Birdy by
entering into empathetic communication with him and providing chance to express his fear or
any expectation. On the basis of this communication, the patient can be encouraged to recognize
his strength and develop their self-esteem (Jung et al., 2016). This will help Birdy to interact
confidently in social group.
As schizophrenia is mainly cognitive disorder, two forms of treatment are available for
such patient. First treatment option is the pharmacological treatment option by providing anti-
psychotic medication to patient. This is necessary for acute and long term management of
schizophrenia (Leucht et al., 2013). Another treatment option is the use of cognitive therapy to
treat psychosis in schizophrenia patient. Cognitive therapy is recognized as specific and effective
intervention for schizophrenia patients because it mainly use cognitive rehabilitation or social

skills training to reduce psychotic symptoms and modify dysfunctional beliefs of patient (Gould
et al., 2015).
The above two treatment options are associated with different side effects in managing
schizophrenia too. Firstly, the use of anti-psychotic medications for schizophrenia patient is
associated with many side effects such as dizziness, weight gain, tremors and restlessness.
Hence, such side effects may further increase the issues for patients and there is a need to
consider the need for medication in individual patient. In addition, the side effect or adverse
impact of cognitive therapy on schizophrenia patient is that some patients may get more
disturbed and their symptoms may relapse. This will increase the need for re-hospitalization of
patient.
Considering the above discussion on impact of schizophrenia on patients, two
recommendations for clients to manage their illness includes increasing their resilience skills
and taking time out to engage in other activities that distract their mind from delusions. Focusing
on resilience and coping skill will help client to get back their lost motivation and emotions in
activities. Engaging in extra activities will help them to come out from unreal thought pattern.
The essay gave insight into the Birdy movie which effectively depicted the plight and
sufferings of people suffering from dementia. Through the character of Birdy, one can easily
relate to types of disorder thinking experienced by people with dementia. The adverse impact of
mental disorder on psychological, socio-cultural and spiritual life of people is also clearly
understood from the essay. The essay also gives insight into possible nursing interventions,
treatment options and self-management strategies for client to treat the patients.

Reference
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