Psychological issues in the movie
Dream House, a psychological movie, illustrates how psychological issues can affect the reasoning, imagination and well-being of an individual. Directed by Jim Sheridan, this movie has been rated a must watch by psychiatric nurses and this piece looks into some psychological issues arising from the movie. These are issues that affect one psychologically.
The first psychological issue witnessed in this movie is heart break. Boyce had been hired by Jack to kill Ann, her ex-wife in revenge. This is because he is heart broken by the move Ann took to divorce him. However, the killer gets into a wrong house thereby killing Peter Ward’s wife Elizabeth and two daughters, Beatrice and Katherine.
The next is murder. The murder of wife and two of his daughters interferes with Peter Ward psychologically resulting to him being taken to psychiatric hospital. He even changes his name from Peter to Will so as to distance himself with the murder charges against him.
Another psychological issue that comes out clearly in this movie is accusation. Whether false or rightful accusation, it interferes with one’s psychology. For instance, Jack tries to kill Ann after realizing that Boyce did not succeed but later tries to frame Peter responsible for the murder. He does not want to be associated with the murder. On the other hand, Peter is accused falsely of the murder and this result to him being disturbed in his mind.
As a Psychiatric nurse, if a patient is admitted in my workstation for having psychological problems as a result of the psychological issues named above, I would employ psychotherapy approach in order to solve the problem. This entails probing the patient more and trying to make him/her admit that whatever has happened has actually happened and advice positively. This is very instrumental since the initial stage of dealing with psychological problems resulting from tragedy is to admit its occurrence (Kaufman, 2011, p. 45).
Moreover, the techniques that are employed in this approach also build confidence and sense of human in the affected persons’ mind. Being that this approach is interactive in nature, that feeling of loneliness in the mind of the patient would be absent.
However, the best solution for any psychological problem is the prevention. If one prevents an occurrence that would lead to psychological disturbance the better. The best preventive measure in this movie would be avoidance. If Jack could have only avoided revenging on Ann, he would have never thought of killing her, thus preventing all other issues that occurred leading to various individuals experiencing psychological issues. Therefore, isolation is the best preventive measure for psychological matters.
Church is the best agency in the society that can provide solution to individuals with psycho-social problems. This is because a Christian counselor would always refer to the bible to beef up the counseling. Besides, adding the word of God as content during solution seeking induces confidence in the affected person. The word of God together with the counseling would create great impact on the person who is psychologically challenged.
Conclusively, the movie ‘Dream House’ has educational content and I strongly recommend it for students. Someone who watches the episode in the movie would learn about vengeance, murder and accusation and associate them with daily life. One would also learn to be patient and find the best solution in an occurrence of unlawful event rather than engaging in issues that would lead to psychological problems.
References
Kaufman, A. (2011). Principles of psychiatric counseling. New Jersey: Prentice Hall
