An earlier draft of the following article was uploaded to our website prematurely on Sept. 11. The following article is the final version of the piece, but both articles will remain on the website in their entirety in order to recognize the contributor for their work.
I, Hanni Salata, am mentally ill.
I have diagnoses for major depressive disorder and PTSD from repetitive childhood trauma, neither of which is helped by my autism. I go through episodes where I struggle to speak, I have panic attacks at any unexpected noise and I avoid sleep to avoid the nightmares. Even after a decade of treatment, my symptoms are not pretty. But they are the truth, and that’s worth something.
In the years I’ve spent learning to cope with my illness, I’ve gotten pretty tired of seeing it in movies. It’s not that I’m not happy to have representation, it’s that the representation is too romanticized. Every mentally ill character we’re presented with is either a genius cursed with trauma or a rich white kid waiting for their “Good Will Hunting” moment.
Enter “Words on Bathroom Walls,” a new YA romance featuring a mentally ill protagonist. The only reason I insisted on taking my partner to this film was because the promos promised a soundtrack written by a favorite band of mine, The Chain Smokers. Within the first 10 minutes, though, I was hooked on the story.
The film follows protagonist Adam, a teenage boy with dreams of becoming a chef, who has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. In my freshman year of high school, a new medicine caused me to develop dangerously high serotonin levels and thus, symptoms nearly identical to those of paranoid schizophrenia.
The relatable moments didn’t stop there. Immediately after Adam’s diagnosis, his mother throws herself into chatroom after chatroom, forum after experimental trial after support group, looking for a cure. It’s a tale familiar to most of us with these illnesses. His stepfather hides the knives, obviously trying to prevent any tragic occurrences, but inevitably keeping Adam away from his strongest coping skill–cooking.
So Adam starts another pill and a new school. The meds seem to be working, and he meets a girl who seems to like him. But of course, it can’t be that easy for long. Adam begins experiencing some of the more unsavory symptoms related to psychotropic drugs (luckily not anal leakage or sexual dysfunction, though he does crack a refreshingly honest joke about how frequent those side effects really are), and the doubts start creeping in.
He wonders if he’s doing more harm than good in his family and whether or nothe should let Maya be with “someone like him.” It seems overdramatic, perhaps, but I can’t say I haven’t been there. As Adam pointed out, a world where people are rushing to grant the wishes of kids with cancer but averting their eyes from kids who see things can be kind of disheartening.
This is a romance, so of course, it has a positive ending. Maya’s line “you don’t get to decide whether or not I want to love you” brought tears to my eyes (although those could also be attributed to the strength with which my partner was squeezing my hand as if to echo the point).
There is no final cure, if that’s what you’re hoping for. That would destroy the honesty of the film. But there is hope. Adam has a family and lover who are willing to fight for him. I know that most psychotropics work for a patient for a maximum of around seven years, and I left the theater content, knowing that when Adam’s time ran up he’d have the support to get through it. That’s the happiest ending I can think of for anyone.
