The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” gives an interesting point of view on mental health by author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As discussed in class, the author writes from her personal struggles with clinical depression. Her point of view in the story served as a way to shed light on the methods used by physicians. She believed the methods such as “rest cure” not only made patients more mental ill, but also produced an unhealthy quality of living.

This reminds me of a movie I recently watched in my freshman seminar:  Youth in Contemporary Italian Cinema class. The Best of Youth is a contemporary Italian film in which mental health is the center theme of the movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Youth. Throughout the first part the movie we see the struggles of Giorgia a mental patient in the 1960’s. During this time in Italy, mental patients are treated with electroshock therapy for their mental disorder. As Giorgia struggled to survive the horrors of a mental patient, two brothers, Nicola and Matteo help her escape the asylum call Villa Quieta which translates to Quite Villa. The name of the asylum serves as a symbolic representation of how mental patients are forced into oppression by their physicians.

Further in the film, Giorgia gets separated from Nicola and Matteo in their trip to Turin. Both brothers separate and go in their own path keeping in mind Giorgia. Nicola life is impacted by Giorgia so much that later he himself becomes a psychiatrics. Nicola becomes involved in taking down abusive asylum and getting rid of electroshock therapy. Nicola and Perkins Gilman are similar in a way where they are both fight similar causes, to rid of “cures” that cause more harm than good. In the film, Nicola tries to give his patients a voice to speak for themselves and take down asylums with their testimonies in court. In many ways, Perkins Gilman uses “The Yellow Wallpaper” as her testimony to not only to help others, but also take down forms of “rest cure” methods.