Awakenings (1990)

This movie was one of the saddest I have watch - because of how real it is. This movie has reinforced my passion for psychology and reminded me why I am here today.


It Gets Easier. But Does It?

Does it ever get easier?

"It gets easier over time" - Nurse Eleanor advised Dr Sayer. Have nurse Eleanor and the rest of the medical staff been desensitized to the conditions of the patients?

I believe that they have been desensitized because seeing their patients suffer has evoked negative feelings in them causing them to have a gradual decrease in responsiveness towards the patients' conditions (Krahe & Möller, 2011). They do no feel empathy when they see their patients suffering nor do they feel the need to go beyond their duties to help them. Eventually, the nurses start helping them only when Dr Sayer managed to stimulate responses from the patients. 

I believe that we should have an active realisation of how much the patients are suffering, just so we would push ourselves to find a cure and to care for them. 

Life is A Gift

Appreciate life because we only have one of it

Watching this movie has made me realised that we are too busy living for the future and not for the present. We should learn to appreciate the life that we have because we only have only have one opportunity to do so. 

In the movie, Leonard sees life as a gift and tells everyone to appreciate it. He tells the doctors not to take the simplest things, like the ability to take a walk for granted because he is unable to do so. Leonard sees his life as a glass half full, as he is not frustrated and angry that he lost 30 years of his life, instead he is appreciative and thankful that he has managed to gain a chance of living his life. He's puzzled to why newspapers tend to report the negative events and not positive ones, because lets face it, negativity always sells. To Leonard, we should not dwell on the bad, but focus on the good and what life has given us. 

Logic vs. Emotions

Faith leads to possibilities

Sometimes all we need to is follow our gut, or have a little faith. Though Dr Sayer was mocked as he had no concrete evidence for the reactions shown by Lucy or why the L-Dopa medications will work, Dr Sayer had faith in the patients and in himself. He believed that all was not lost, that the catatonic patients like Lucy and Leonard were somewhat aware of the world, in their own way. 

When Dr Kaufman refused to allow the any of the patients to consume L-Dopa as he believed that it would not work, Dr Sayer appealed to his logical side by attempting to explain the symptoms shown by the patients in the garden ward. Gradually. Dr Kaufman hesitantly allowed Dr Sayer to run is test. With this, the message that came through to me was, sometimes we should listen to our emotions because not everything can be explained by logic or science. Our gut feeling has helped us time and time again; where's the harm on relying on it, sometimes?

Kindness and Love Goes A Long Way

Kindness and love is what we need

Caring for the mentally ill is not an easy feat. Factor in the age of the mentally ill, the discrimination and negative treatment becomes more prominent. Ageism (Age UK, 2017) is a thing, even when the senior citizens have a perfect physical health. Therefore, one of the prominent messages of this movie is that individuals with mental illnesses are also people and should be treated with the same care and respect as other healthy individuals. Although the mentally ill are unable to care or defend themselves from negative treatment, they should be treated positively as they are still human beings. 

The patients do have a sense of awareness of how they are treated because Leonard tells Paula that her father is aware of how Paula treats him. Towards the end of the movie, Paula willingly dances with Leonard although he was fidgeting and had severe body spasms. She showed Leonard, a mentally ill patient, kindness and love, and that action positively affected him, as for that brief moment his spams disappeared.



References
Age UK. (2017). Discrimination and rights: What is ageism? Retrieved from http://www.ageuk.org.uk/work-and-learning/discrimination-and-rights/what-is-ageism/

Krahe, B., & Möller, I. (2011). Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4). 630-646. doi:10.1037/a0021711