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Lesson Plan: Introduction to Mental Health in Young Adult Literature

Grade Range: 11-12

Objective: To define mental health, introduce the importance of mental health in society, explain how society is currently raising awareness for mental health issues, and introduce various good literary sources.

Resources: Computer, Overhead, Copies of It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Active Participation

Common Core Standards: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3 Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.7 Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)

Overview: 

Bell Ringer: To begin class, I will play this song without pretense. I will introduce the song, telling students to listen closely to the lyrics, stand up if they hear something that they have ever felt, and follow the lyric’s directions. (5 minutes)

Discussion: Were you aware of the amount of students that felt this way? How would you go about finding out? What do you think of when you hear the phrase “mental health?” Does “mental health” differ from “mental illness?” How would you define “mental illness?” (20 minutes)

Activity: Students mention various types of mental illnesses and mental states they’ve heard of. After list is completed, find out what they know about each illness T/P/S. (20 minutes)

Conclusion Discussion: The students in the musical created a suicide awareness video that went viral. Note suicide is the 2nd highest killer amongs students 7-12 and approximately 5,240 students attempt it daily. How did people go about learning about things such as this and various other mental illnesses before the internet was the way we know it now? (10 minutes)

Homework: Read Part 1 of It’s Kind of a Funny Story and look up #semicolonproject and come back with somebody’s story.

NOTE: Do not mention the fact that Ned Vizzini and the founder of the semicolon project died (tell them not to read the preface and not to look up the author; Don’t look up the semicolon project’s founder). This way, they can learn at the end of the unit and have a discussion regarding the fact that depression is not something that is a one-and-done deal.

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It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Parts 6-10 (SPOILERS)

“Live.” I have a tradition of verbally stating the last sentence of each book I read. I think this wasn’t Craig speaking, but Vizzini speaking.Near the end, Craig states “I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it...The only thing is, it’s not an option now. It’s just...a possibility” (441). Vizzini wrote this book a week after he himself left a psychiatric ward, so I would like to think Vizzini was looking to send a strong message in this statement. A chemical imbalance of the brain doesn’t just evaporate. They can have highs and lows. In this instance, it just seemed particularly low. Now let’s get into the 2nd half of this book...and why it might make you reconsider how you felt about the book as a whole.

So Aaron’s message leaves Craig in the same form he had been in when he entered Six North. Fortunately, however, he had a way to recover. GIRLS! That’s right! Here’s that romantic savior influence I spoke about during Made You Up. The only thing is that, in the context of this book, it’s a bit...different. So along with Aaron’s message came messages from a few girls. “Hey! I hear you’re depressed! I feel that way myself sometimes!” “Hey! I get depressed too and my boyfriend just doesn’t understand! Maybe we could hang out some time or something!” etc. etc. I believe Vizzini’s intention behind this is to reveal the difference between someone saying “I have depression” and “I get depressed some times.” The latter is a falsehood. It is a microagression that makes depressed synonymous with sad and invalidates the person at hand. I think that was Vizzini’s intent by putting these girls here. Craig, however, is also called upon by another girl while in Six North: a girl in the hospital by the name of Noelle. She looks to talk to him and, after playing the question game, Craig believes he can kiss her. She stops him and tells him that’s not quite how it works. He had never kissed a girl and so his cues were mixed up. Now, although they don’t kiss, they seem to be in some romantic relationship after speaking to one another for, right after, he can sleep more comfortably and mentions to his therapist that he’s pretty sure they’re going to date after they leave. And they do. Noelle is what is now known as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl; a quirky character whose sole purpose is to give the protagonist a greater appreciation of life. She’s the one who suggests he draw something from his childhood, which leads to his love for “mind maps,” decision to pursue art and art therapy, and keeps him happy. 

Now they hadn’t kissed, but he was obsessively speaking of her...until his crush Nia visits him. When she visits, she states, “I knew you wanted to kill yourself, but I didn’t know you wanted to kill yourself,” a device I believe Vizzini uses to show how society normalized suicide to the point that it is not given fair attention when it is actually a concern. She comes to the hospital to “make [Craig] better.” What does that mean? She broke up with her boyfriend and went to a psychiatric hospital to fuck the kid with a suicidal ideation. This is the extreme that people go to when hearing someone wants to kill themselves? Why wait until they actually try to help them? And the cherry on top? He does it. Not because he doesn’t have feelings for Noelle, but because “when you’ve got a really gorgeous girl in front of you and she’s biting her lip and talking low and smiling-and you’re hard-what are you going to do?” ...Whenever someone reminisces on this book, it seems as though nobody pays attention to this. Vizzini’s masculine jargon (one of his last lines uses “gay” in a derogatory fashion). He does not wind up having sex with Nia because his roommate walks in and, of course, Noelle sees the whole thing. After a second game of questions where she’s a tad more angry, Craig apologizes and she forgives him on command. And, by the time Craig uses his “mind maps” to save the ward and make everyone happy, he looks to have sex with Noelle in his room and, as he is doing so, he’s comparing Noelle and Nia! 

Now these circumstances makes the book out to look a bit bad, sure, but one can sympathize with Vizzini in a sense. When Vizzini personally admitted himself, he was 24 years old. I believe that the oversexualized clusterfuck going on in Craig’s mind is merely Vizzini looking to take his story and make it relatable to younger audiences by giving it a 15-year old protagonist. We will never know, but what we do know is that, for the last 11 years, this book has been relating with young adults, looking to reduce the 5,042 students that daily attempt to kill themselves. Looks to give students some light. In general, I would say this a fantastic story in the sense that it highlights how one can not only find assistance for suicidal ideations, but find someone to relate with. Someone who has been there. Despite the sexism, classism, transphobia, romantic savior complex, and romanticism of the ill, Vizzini’s heart is in it. And it shows. I gave it a 5/5 on GoodReads when I read it at first...but I think it might have dropped to a 4 after this reading.

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Disorders Summed Up in Architecture

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Review (SPOILERS)

If you are unaware, April is National Autism Awareness Month. In honor of this, Michigan State University’s Wharton Center for the Performing Arts hosted the travelling production of the critically-acclaimed play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The production, adapted from a novel by Mark Haddon, tied the previous record for the most Oliver Award wins when opening in London and won the Tony Award for Best Play upon hopping over the pond. 

Synopsis:

The play itself focuses on Christopher Boone, a 15-year old with an autism spectrum condition many consider to be Asperger’s Syndrome who, upon discovering a dead dog in his neighborhood, looks to investigate who killed Wellington the dog. As he investigates this, he discovers painful truths about his family. His father discourages his investigation and, upon finding his book of notes, hides it from him. As Christopher looks for it, he discovers that his mother, who he had been told has been dead for years, had moved out because she was incapable of handling Christopher’s disorder. When it is discovered his father had been hiding this from Christopher for years, his father also admits he was the one to kill Wellington for, after a fight with the dog’s owner, his ex-girlfriend, his rage led him to kill the barking dog with a garden fork. Now fearing his potential death, Christopher takes a one man exodus from Swindon to London. 

This task, however, proves to be far more terrifying than Christopher expects. A visual spectacle, this play gives us a look into Christopher’s mind, utilizing lighting, sound, and various other visual effects to show how Christopher’s mind operates under copious amounts of stress. He can jump from energetic, happy, and proactive in one scene to apprehensive, fearful, and violent the next, incapable of understanding the circumstances necessary to make it to London. Many things charge through Christopher’s mind, but one singularity brings him solace, mathematics and Siobhan, Christopher’s para-professional who teaches him how to engage himself into society in an accepted manner. 

Although Christopher eventually finds his mom, he is aware of the circumstance and his mother’s boyfriend, a drunk who hates Christopher. He has nowhere to turn, so he only looks to finish his Math A Exam, a complicated math test, which he finishes with an A star, the equivalent of an A+. The play finishes with Christopher’s father getting him a dog in the hopes that they may make amends and, when meeting up with Siobhan, he talks of all he has achieved and asks “I can do anything, right?” Siobhan, hesitant to answer, gets the black out moment, for the play ends with her gesturing as if she’s about to respond. I believe the intention behind this is meant to give us some ambiguity, letting us decide.

Reflection:

Overall, Christopher is a highly complex individual. He is intelligent, caring, and happy, but he has a difficult time interacting with people in society. This play deserves the praise it has due to the way it portrays the Autism spectrum. It breaks the barriers of stereotypes and shows the true potential of children with Asperger’s. This play is interesting for me because it reminds me of my friend from high school. I was a year older than him, so I got to see him grow as a person through the theatre program we were involved in. While he had many tendencies that were not deemed socially-acceptable at the beginning of his high school career, he was still an intelligent, fascinating individual. Through theatre, he has found his solace and has become a more socially-accepted human being. That’s why I think drama therapy is so pivotal. What I found beautiful was the crowd. Although I had seen the play previously in London, it was played year-round on West End. Today was opening night of Curious Incident in East Lansing and, waiting for the doors to open, I saw a substantially large amount of Autistic audience members. A place for people to learn about the intricacies behind Autism, the ways families interact when looking to incorporate a child with Autism into their household, and for the Autistic community to see an interpretation of their disorder and interact with other people who understand their experiences.

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A Beautiful Description of Ned Vizzini and Why He May Have Taken His Life By His Best Friend, Marty Beckerman

http://www.mtv.com/news/2021698/ned-vizzini-tribute/

For those of us lucky enough to have naturally balanced neurochemistry, suicide may seem like a loss of willpower — giving up, running away, abandoning responsibilities — but for people struggling with depression and other mental health issues, it can feel more like a gravitational pull. We need to understand that, but it doesn’t make anything inevitable.

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WHY WE NEED 13 REASONS WHY! (5,240 SUICIDE ATTEMPTS GRADES 7 - 12 DAILY!!!!)

https://www.facebook.com/PopSugarCelebrity/videos/10155359976059824/

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This can’t be happening.

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How Words Can Make An Impact

The world changes. We change. Although 13 Reasons Why and It’s Kind of a Funny Story are prime examples of suicide awareness and have assisted the lives of thousands of people, these books are around ten years old. And suicide awareness is evolving. In this circumstance, a video of Evan Hansen’s speech celebrating the life of a colleague who took his own life goes viral, healing people nationwide. And though this may be fictional, that does not mean it is not actually out there. For example, Project Semicolon has saved the lives of many (including two of my closest friends) and made suicide awareness a very important topic in the modern age. I am saddened to say that the founder of Project Semicolon, Amy Bleuel, took her life last month, the same person who saved others the way she had wished she could save her father. This just goes to show that suicide awareness is not a one-and-done event. Regardless of how much of an impact they had on their community, Bleuel and Vizzini still could not handle the life’s impact. Their contributions did not just make their problems evaporate. Just like they won’t make the problems of you or those close to you disappear instantly. Know the signs. Know the hotline (1-800-273-TALK). And know that, like with a semicolon, your life is not finished. You have more to say. You belong. You will be found.

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I appreciate the input. I will admit, this is a disorder I am not as familiar with, so I should have done a bit more googling for this circumstance. That’s specifically why I requested more information on the (disorder. My apologies for saying disease). Not only for my personal benefit, but because I wasn’t quite sure where to go for information on DID. Google considered Norman Bates to be diagnosed with DID and I used WebMD (my big mistake) as my main source to understand it. I agree that the best way to research the disorder is to talk to the community. My problem with that, however, was not knowing where to start. So I admire you for calling me out on my misinformed schema of the disorder. My rationale for using Bates Motel as the depiction of DID is because it appeared off to me. I felt as though there had to be a better representation of the disorder (little did I even realize that it wasn’t even representative of DID at all). My blog is focused on giving examples of mental health in mass-media that would resonate with students currently in secondary education. This was intended to be the negative example. Is there anything representative of your community you find would be more beneficial for students in middle/high school and is there anything else you believe should be known about DID?

YA TV: Bates Motel Seasons 1-4 (SPOILERS)

So….this one is a bit…peculiar. So you all know Norman Bates from Psycho and you know he has some…problems. Dissociative Identity Disorder, to be precise. This might be familiar to a few of you more recently through the movie Split with James McAvoy, an M. Night Shyamalan thriller where Kevin, the character with the disorder, plays the antagonist. I guess that, overall, the media has kept a strong, negative schema around this disorder ever since Alfred Hitchcock created the character of Norman Bates. So why?

Let’s start with the show. This A&E show is essentially a modern-day prequel to (and recreation of) the movie Psycho and focuses on Norman Bates’s ability to function in society and help run his mother’s new motel after they move due to Norman’s father’s mysterious death. The way the story most likely happened is that Norman killed him after he was engaging in domestic violence with Norma, Norman’s mother. For Norman, however, he recalls the event as his mother killing him. In fact, a fair amount of people have died in their new town as well, including visitors at the motel, his best friend’s mom, one of his classmates, and his favorite English teacher and, for Norman, these all draw back to his mother. This, however, is not the case. It appears as though every time Norman finds himself in a circumstance of a sexual or hyperemotional level, he blacks out and his other identity, his mother Norma, takes his place. There are instances where we see him speaking as Norma, dressing and acting like Norma, and constantly looking to please Norma around the house (from now on, let’s just refer to her as “mother.” Hitchcock could have laid back on the symbolism there). Norman’s mother identity can be found in jargon with him in these sexual scenarios, telling him how he’s not that kind of person and telling him how to act. The mass amount of murders revolving around the Bates’s, however, made Norma concerned to the point of creating a false marriage to the local sheriff, Mr. Romero, to get his health insurance and have Norman institutionalized. It is this separation from the physical Norma that makes “mother” thrive, aggressively manipulating anyone she comes in contact with. The show reaches its climax when Norma cannot take being away from Norman for so long, returning him home to discover his mother is now in a legitimate relationship with Sheriff Romero. He then looks to kill both of his identities in a murder suicide that only winds up killing Norma, leaving Norman to the state you find him in in Psycho  (which will be portrayed in Season 5).

So the question remains: why do we only see this Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder) as something villainous and horrifying? With these multiple personalities, a person’s entire identity shifts, giving them a completely new persona. In productions such as this and Split, it is seen as a way to bring in a mysterious, potentially dangerous element via a more violent personality. Environmental factors cause the transition between identities, so, during a sexual encounter, Norman becomes “Mother” in order to keep her son pure and taking the blame for herself, something the actual Norma has a tendency to do as well. This is still a very confusing disorder. Even doctors cannot quite understand everything about Multiple Personality Disorder, but, what we do know, is that there is a high suicide rate among people with the disorder. This, in collaboration with its portrayals in the media, tend to make people believe people must exclusively have a violent, villainous identity and that Dissociative Identity Disorder is something to be feared. You can’t fear the unknown. I don’t believe people have the right to fear a disorder when they are misinformed of it. While there may be devious personas like “Mother,” there can also be quiet, shy personas like Norman. It all depends on the person and it’s not until the experts can solve the mystery of how the brain functions in varying personalities that we can begin to try and understand just what the circumstances are and how to approach them. It is stated on WebMD that people typically come into an office diagnosed with 2-4 and wind up discovering an average of 13-15 identities, varying in gender, sexual orientation, and background. I can honestly say that I’m not quite sure how one should approach a disease like this. I believe the best thing to do is make people aware that, just like you and I are different, so are the people within one human body. Some may be good. Some may be bad. What’s important to understand is they’re all human and to treat them as such. If anyone has any information on this disease that may be insightful, please feel free to message me!

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It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Parts 3-5 (SPOILERS)

Laughter. We all do it, but for what purpose? When we last left Craig in Part 2, he was feeling better and so, when he ran out of his Zoloft, he just thought he could get out of it all. Didn’t have to take it anymore. Stress caught up with him, he felt inferior, the soldier in his mind began speaking again, and he begins Part 3 prepared to jump off of the Brooklyn Bridge. Fortunately, as he is leaving, he finds a book that has a suicide hotline within it. Next thing we know, we find Craig in Six North, the adult psychiatric ward of his local hospital. Craig begins to become accustomed to the area through his newfound friend, Humble (who, ironically, acts like he owns the place). Humble and Craig are able to take pleasure in observing the “freaks” of Six North. Using some ableist and transphobic jargon, Craig finds solace in knowing he is not as bad off as the rest of the people on the ward. He and Humble find them quite humorous, actually.

This brings us back to laughter. People have been looking for centuries as to why we do it. According to French playwright, Moliere, comedy’s function is “to correct men’s vices.” It provides correction. Henri Bergson states that it requires a “momentary anesthesia of the heart,” for you can laugh at someone you pity, but can’t feel pity and laughter at the same time. So, when Craig finds himself laughing at the people on the ward. He is potentially looking to heal through the misery of others, laughing at people he pities. As bad as this is, he finds himself feeling better after it...until he gets a phone call from his friend Aaron, the stoner dating Craig’s crush. He knows where Craig is and begins to make fun of him for it and asks a billion questions. In this circumstance, he is the one who is being laughed at. I feel as though this brings a full division between those with mental illness and those without. Craig can say he’s not as bad as other people on the ward, but people on the outside do not see that, making him just as “crazy.” There is no spectrum for people outside. Therefore, Craig is also able to be laughed at out of pity. I think it’s in that moment that Craig realizes that, regardless of circumstance, mental illness is mental illness. Nobody has to be better or worse than anyone else. To outsiders, there isn’t that spectrum he’s looking for to seem better. He just wants out early and uses the other people on the ward to obtain a catharsis. It isn’t until Aaron calls that he realizes that’s not the circumstance. I mean...It’s Kind of a Funny Story, right? How do you feel about the laughter in Vizzini?

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An Example of Dissociative Personality Disorder

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YA TV: Bates Motel Seasons 1-4 (SPOILERS)

So....this one is a bit...peculiar. So you all know Norman Bates from Psycho and you know he has some...problems. Dissociative Identity Disorder, to be precise. This might be familiar to a few of you more recently through the movie Split with James McAvoy, an M. Night Shyamalan thriller where Kevin, the character with the disorder, plays the antagonist. I guess that, overall, the media has kept a strong, negative schema around this disorder ever since Alfred Hitchcock created the character of Norman Bates. So why?

Let’s start with the show. This A&E show is essentially a modern-day prequel to (and recreation of) the movie Psycho and focuses on Norman Bates’s ability to function in society and help run his mother’s new motel after they move due to Norman’s father’s mysterious death. The way the story most likely happened is that Norman killed him after he was engaging in domestic violence with Norma, Norman’s mother. For Norman, however, he recalls the event as his mother killing him. In fact, a fair amount of people have died in their new town as well, including visitors at the motel, his best friend’s mom, one of his classmates, and his favorite English teacher and, for Norman, these all draw back to his mother. This, however, is not the case. It appears as though every time Norman finds himself in a circumstance of a sexual or hyperemotional level, he blacks out and his other identity, his mother Norma, takes his place. There are instances where we see him speaking as Norma, dressing and acting like Norma, and constantly looking to please Norma around the house (from now on, let’s just refer to her as “mother.” Hitchcock could have laid back on the symbolism there). Norman’s mother identity can be found in jargon with him in these sexual scenarios, telling him how he’s not that kind of person and telling him how to act. The mass amount of murders revolving around the Bates’s, however, made Norma concerned to the point of creating a false marriage to the local sheriff, Mr. Romero, to get his health insurance and have Norman institutionalized. It is this separation from the physical Norma that makes “mother” thrive, aggressively manipulating anyone she comes in contact with. The show reaches its climax when Norma cannot take being away from Norman for so long, returning him home to discover his mother is now in a legitimate relationship with Sheriff Romero. He then looks to kill both of his identities in a murder suicide that only winds up killing Norma, leaving Norman to the state you find him in in Psycho  (which will be portrayed in Season 5).

So the question remains: why do we only see this Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder) as something villainous and horrifying? With these multiple personalities, a person’s entire identity shifts, giving them a completely new persona. In productions such as this and Split, it is seen as a way to bring in a mysterious, potentially dangerous element via a more violent personality. Environmental factors cause the transition between identities, so, during a sexual encounter, Norman becomes “Mother” in order to keep her son pure and taking the blame for herself, something the actual Norma has a tendency to do as well. This is still a very confusing disorder. Even doctors cannot quite understand everything about Multiple Personality Disorder, but, what we do know, is that there is a high suicide rate among people with the disorder. This, in collaboration with its portrayals in the media, tend to make people believe people must exclusively have a violent, villainous identity and that Dissociative Identity Disorder is something to be feared. You can’t fear the unknown. I don’t believe people have the right to fear a disorder when they are misinformed of it. While there may be devious personas like “Mother,” there can also be quiet, shy personas like Norman. It all depends on the person and it’s not until the experts can solve the mystery of how the brain functions in varying personalities that we can begin to try and understand just what the circumstances are and how to approach them. It is stated on WebMD that people typically come into an office diagnosed with 2-4 and wind up discovering an average of 13-15 identities, varying in gender, sexual orientation, and background. I can honestly say that I’m not quite sure how one should approach a disease like this. I believe the best thing to do is make people aware that, just like you and I are different, so are the people within one human body. Some may be good. Some may be bad. What’s important to understand is they’re all human and to treat them as such. If anyone has any information on this disease that may be insightful, please feel free to message me!

[yalitonthebrain]

If you like It’s Kind of a Funny Story

I’m sure you’re probably sick of the musicals on here as is, but I just can’t help it! If I were to say anything in my life was truly therapeutic, it would have to be theatre. I think that drama therapy and music therapy are highly effective ways to promote positive mental health.

Dear Evan Hansen is a new musical making its mark on Broadway. With Tony-award winning director Michael Greif (director of Rent and Next to Normal) and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “right hand man” in Hamilton, Alex Lacemore doing the orchestrations, this Tony-bound musical examines Evan Hansen, a high school student with Social Anxiety Disorder, and how he reacts when classmate Connor Murphy, who was found with a letter by Evan Hansen at the scene of his suicide (but let’s leave that story for a later post). For now, I’d like to show how Evan himself reminds me very much of both Craig and myself within this song.

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Entertainment Weekly Interview with Jay Asher

http://ew.com/books/2017/03/31/thirteen-reasons-why-jay-asher-netflix-tv-show/

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It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Parts 1 and 2 Review (SPOILERS)

This one’s a special one to me. My memory is slim, so I can’t recall what I liked about this story. I don’t remember what the characters were like. I could recollect bits a pieces of them, but I couldn’t paint the picture in my mind. I don’t remember why I loved this book. Then I looked at the cover. Why, I had never seen something that had grabbed my attention like this. It was like a magnet. Every time I found myself passing it at a store, I got closer and closer to it until I caved and checked it out of the library. They always say “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but you never saw eighth grade Joe reading anything that had any Paul Peter Rubens or John Trumbull artwork on it or some shit. Now I’d read plenty of books before this, but this book felt...mature. I felt different after this one. I had read my first young adult novel. It was the largest thing I had ever read and I devoured it. I mean I read this in a day (a grand feat for me, given I cannot read very quickly). Now I looked to keep books I had already read off of this list because I didn’t want to come into this with any biases, but I couldn’t help myself and I’d practically forgotten it all anyways. I’m glad I made this choice. There’s a reason my profile picture is what it is. And this is it. But we’ll get back to that later.

I wanted to break this up into pieces to give a little personal insight and reflection on some of the specifics within the book. At the start, we have been introduced to Craig Gilner. Now Zappia’s Made You Up dances around mental illness a bit in the beginning, giving the amusing preface regarding her protagonist’s encounter with the lobsters. Vizinni starts this with “It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself.” Blunt. Real. Painful. At least that’s how the book started when I read it initially. The copy I purchased includes a foreword by Rachel Cohn that begins with “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come right out there and say it. This is a beloved book about a teenager grappling with suicidal thoughts, written by a beloved author who took his own life.” It hit me hard when I discovered Vizzini killed himself. I learned last year, but it happened back in December of 2013. How? As I read this, I know why it was so compelling to me. The 2nd chapter begins with Craig going to a therapist. He talks about his therapist in such a way that I think of my neurologists. I was constantly on the look for a different one. I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to have seizures anymore and I wanted the grand memory I had before my first seizure in 4th grade. All I get, however, is the same comedic jargon from each one of them, as does Craig with his therapists. The way he speaks to them is very open and systematic. He knows how to dance with the therapist and he does so, giving his personal commentary to us along the way. He knows the books in the therapist office just like I know the diagram of the brain poster and the computer system used in practically every neurologist’s office. 

Craig’s an observer. He has a difficult time talking because he loses himself midsentence (something I am far too familiar with). His friend Aaron is smarter than him, more relaxed than him, and has the girl he’s obsessed with. And so all he does is observe. It’s too difficult to talk because he finds himself stumbling due to the intimidation and he hyperanalyzes every aspect of his life. I relate to that strongly. I fear everything that comes out of my mouth and, just like Craig, I find myself piled up with work that feels overwhelming. Craig gets a 93% and is going insane because he knows that makes him less than the rest of his class. Even with a 3.7, I feel like I’m not going to get anywhere with it. He just wants to feel “normal” (I’m only using that word because he does). He has dreams of making his mark on the world, but feels he can’t do that when he can’t even handle the stress of high school and all that goes along with it. Craig explains all of this to his psychopharmacologist and, when Craig asked how he got started in it, Dr. Barney states that “After college, I went through my own shit and decided that all the physical suffering in the world couldn’t compare to mental anguish.” He got himself cleared up and, when Craig asks how, Dr. Barney states “same way you will. On your own.” This hit me hard reading it now because that’s honestly how it works. It’s a pain going through depression. Craig talks about his difficulties adjusting to “normality,” meeting deadlines, completing standardized testing, and doing it all just to hear he’s now the same as everyone else. He doesn’t stand out for his hard work. He’s just another cog in the system. I was like that too. There are times where I too feel like I’m not going to leave my mark after I die, but I just think I haven’t had the time to make it yet. I made it out, as does Craig (but we’ll get to that later), but it’s important to understand that it’s possible for everyone. Hannah Baker could have survived in 13 Reasons Why had she fought the torment for just a little while longer and found the good in life. And, to those who still can’t, you can too. To quote Lin-Manuel Miranda, “ Life doesn’t discriminate/Between the sinners and the saints/It takes and it takes and it takes/And we keep living anyway/We fall and we cry and we break and we make our mistakes/And if there’s a reason I’m still alive when so many have died/Then I’m willing to wait for it/I’m willing to wait for it.”

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Top 5 Need to Know Facts About ‘13 Reasons Why’

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13 Reasons Why Connection

The relationship between Winterbourne and Daisy Miller in Henry James’s novella “Daisy Miller,” reminds me quite a lot of the relationship between Hannah and Clay in 13 Reasons Why. One could say the passive nature of Winterbourne in response to Daisy mirrors the nature of Clay. Tell me what you think!