Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

John Paul Sharp March 2013 Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

I am a writer, director, and performing artist living atop the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. For the purposes of furthering my learning in human development, I chose to analyze a character in a movie in terms of psychological theory. A friend recommended a movie I hadn't seen before, Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford, based on the book by Judith Guest. In this film, the audience catches up with Conrad and his parents just after he comes home from a four-month stay at a psychiatric hospital following his failed, but serious suicide attempt. In his talks with a therapist, we learn more about Conrad and his brother, who recently drowned right in front of him during a boating accident. Through the course of the film, everyone, including Conrad's estranged parents, undergo some type of selfawareness and transform when thoughts and emotions can no longer be repressed.

The calm in between the storms.

Conrad comes from an upper-middle class family from the 1970s. His parents, are presumably products of the Silent generation, generally people born during and around the Great Depression of the 1930s. People from this generation are seen as unassuming and overly self-conscious due to the loudness of their surrounding G.I. (i.e., World War II) and Baby Boomer (i.e., Civil Rights) generations (Dickenson, 1988). Conrad's mother, Beth, is seen as cold and his father, Calvin, as warm, but both show disassociation from their feelings and a preference for full participation in the norms attached to their shared social-economic status. Could it be that Conrad's parents have naturally sought stability as a reaction to their tumultuous upbringings? New American babies born out of our current Great Recession may have similar experiences to the children of the Great Depression, however, the Silent generation is thought to have been more optimistic about their future (Zurnike, 2009). Conrad's parents' extreme enthusiasm for optimism in
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Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

general seemed to be the largest source of angst for him while reflecting on his life and his relationships. Conrad desperately needed to be sad with his parents, and his parents struggled to know how to be honestly sad in general. Because his parents were products of the Great Depression, perhaps they intuitively felt sadness was a sign of ungratefulness. My own grandparents were Silents and I remember my grandmother was what we would call today obsessive-compulsive about wasting. She always said with a mix between a chirp and a bark, Waste not, want not! My grandfather, while well-loved within the community until he died at age 98, was not one to talk much about emotional subjects with my mother. I never got to know my grandparents like other people I know. My grandparents didn't talk about their feelings, much like Conrad's parents. Since the 1970s, both young and old people have been known to be at the highest risk for suicidal behavior (Westefeld, 2000, p. 454). However, more recently, a dramatic spike has taken place within the middle-adult period of living, namely people of the Baby Boomer generation (Gilmore, 2013), just like Conrad. This new development raises the question: Are people born in the Boomer generation more prone to suicide due to a reaction from their stoic parents and the unlucky timing of the cycles of our economy? Unemployment is known to be one of the more critical factors affecting suicide rates in America and could attribute to at least a quarter of the excess suicides between 2007 and 2010 (Reeves, 2013, p. 1814). If the Silent generation could be considered the Lucky Ones, does that make the Boomers unlucky?

Press, pain, and perturbation.

In 1987, psychologist Edwin Schniedman developed the first truly psychological theoretical framework for discovering suicidal tendencies in people, with a three-plane rating system (i.e., score of 1 to 5) of press (i.e.,

Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

positive or negative events in life), pain (i.e., psychological suffering), and perturbation (i.e., dichotomous thinking). (Westefeld, 2000, p. 449, 450). For Conrad, helplessly watching his brother drown before him was a negative press that led to unmanageable psychological pain. Not being able to speak candidly with his parents, he must have adapted tunnel thinking, leading him to a psychological place where only death was possible. In the film, he makes concerted efforts to change his ways of thinking and better manage his pain. As more negative presses come about (e.g., an awkward romantic relationship with a peer and the successful suicide of his friend, Karen, from the psychiatric hospital), Conrad is challenged to enforce new, life-affirming ideas about himself and his relationships to others. My sister committed suicide in 2008 when she was thirty years old and I thought of her when Conrad discovered Karen had died. What is the difference between Conrad and Karen, or my sister and I? The film inferred that one was just stronger than the other. If we take this as truth, one could conclude that our threshold for psychological pain and our ability to think healthily are probably more critical than the actual events that take place in our lives. After all, the circumstances of my sister's life were relatively smoother and easier than the life I led in thirty years. I had near-death experiences due to bad decisions I made and I was lucky to survive, yet my sister achieved general success and couldn't handle living. I believe whatever advances have taken place in suicidology over the last several decades have still not gotten us to a point of being able to properly diagnose or prevent suicide. In my own experience, I knew there was no way to predict or prevent my sister's suicide based on the capabilities of our mental health system. How would we have known back then that my sister was possibly bipolar when most of the time, we hear that term when media reporters speculate about random gunmen on killing sprees?

Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

My sister was a nurse and probably knew about psychological disorders, yet she sought no diagnosis or treatment. This speaks to the elusiveness of certain mental health disorders due to societal stigmas attached to their terms, as well as an overall lack of proper mental health research development and mainstream awareness, participation, and education within society.

What I've learned.

Don't judge a book by its cover. Just because someone is always smiling and trying to make the best of the situation doesn't mean they are in any way stable or satisfied with living. Many of the greatest battles that take place in our lives are all self-contained within our minds and souls and we rarely know if someone is truly struggling. For this very reason, we should always attempt to treat people with cautious kindness, no matter what front they are putting out for the sake of peace. To embrace life is to embrace our voices and our stories. Everyone is the same in that we all function differently. To treat others equally is to treat them as individuals. Not everyone copes with psychological pain the same way. Not everyone naturally thinks in a clear, logical manner. Not everyone comes from the same family dynamics or has the same desires or needs met through family. The way to create unity with each other is to talk to each other better by learning and sharing each others' stories. I believe America's number one societal goal should be to end our unintentional oppression against unconditional love and healing. In a way, I believe we need Generation Z'ers to emulate the best of all their predecessors by learning from the worst of us. Imagine how different Conrad's story might have been had his parents been emotionally connected from the beginning. In 2010, the 10th leading cause of death for Americans was suicide (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). I believe Ordinary People

Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

represented reality best when it so briefly highlighted Karen. She held the audience's attention for such a short, brief span of the film, yet she represents the top 10 reason why people die. If I were to write and direct my own feature film like Ordinary People, I would start right where the story ended, and I would then begin to tell Karen's story, from the eyes of her sister, or her brother. I'd want to tell the story of the girl who did not survive. Continuously learning about suicide and how to cope with life after suicide is an ongoing journey for me that benefits both my personal and professional development. Not only does increasing my knowledge about suicide help create stability for me, sharing my story throughout the years helps me stay deeply connected to others.

Surviving Suicide: An analysis of Ordinary People.

John Paul Sharp

References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012, January). Suicide and self-inflicted injury. Retrieved March 20, 2013 from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm Dickenson, J.R. (1988, June 5). The silent generation's candidate. The Washington Post, p. C7. Gilmor, D. (2013, February 8). Baby boomers and suicide: the surprising trend. The Star. Retrieved March 20, 2013 from http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/02/08/baby_boomers_and _suicide_the_surprising_trend.html. Reeves, A., Stuckler, D., McKee, M., Gunnell, D., Chang, S., & Basu, S. (2012). Increase in state suicide rates in the USA during economic recession. The Lancet, 380(9856), 1813 - 1814. doi: 10.1016/S01406736(12)61910-2. Westefeld, J., Range, L., Rogers, J., Maples, M., Bromley, J., & Alcorn, J. (2000). Suicide: An overview. The Counseling Psychologist. Doi: 10.1177/001100000028402 Zernike, K. (2009, March 7). Generation OMG. New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/weekinreview/08zernike.html.