Hattie was diagnosed with Paranoid schizophrenia
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Sybil
caprice1221 — 15 years ago(January 26, 2011 04:00 AM)
Hattie was diagnose with Paranoid schizophrenia, not Alzheimer.Dr. Wilbur talks to Willard Dorsett who admits to all of Sybil's childhood injuries, but denies his late wife Hattie inflicted them. He mentions that he once committed Hattie to a hospital where she was diagnosed with Paranoid schizophrenia, but says the doctors were wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(1976_film) -
genevaporter — 12 years ago(April 14, 2013 08:43 AM)
People back then had a bleak view of mental illness and treatments. For most people, being mentally ill meant being confined in a rubber room in a straightjacket and being subject to electroshock therapy and lobotomies. Mental illness was viewed as a terminal disease: once you got it you would always be crazy, and the treatments appeared to be too similar to how you would treat criminals. Psychiatric intervention was viewed as a punishment and a horrible fate. Its stigma was so strong that people thought merely talking to a therapist was a gateway into a life of seclusion and torture.
ECT is still used but it's not as fearsome as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest made it look. In the developed world it is used only with the patient's consent.
Willard did not want Hattie to be labeled mentally ill because he loved her and did not want to see her locked up and treated like a rabid animal. His denial reached inappropriate levels as it made him overlook her harming Sybil, but I can sort of understand why he was reluctant to cast Hattie into a fate that was thought to be undignified and frightening, a fate worse than death. -
caprice1221 — 12 years ago(April 14, 2013 09:47 AM)
I agree with you hundred percent.
Willard-This is just my opinion, he was unaware that Sybil was tortured by his wife Hattie. He too was abused by Hattie. He had a history of being a battered man. Men have a hard time expressing this to authorities and hospitals because he was abused by a woman, his wife. Even today men do not seek help, if they are abused by a woman a fear they aren't a man.
He accepted in time that Sybil was telling him the truth about her mother Hattie. He grieved over his blindness and sought help for Sybil whenever he could until his own death. -
fiatlux-1 — 12 years ago(May 16, 2013 05:38 PM)
But even in the book, it was extremely clear that this is what Hattie had.
She showed all the signs, even the catatonic phase of schizophrenia.
"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush." -
cami2 — 12 years ago(July 13, 2013 01:36 PM)
Well according to Debbie Nathan she wasn't but Nathan's book too has been outed as not factual. She quotes the fact there was no psychiatric dept at the Mayo Clinic in that time period but she doesn't even mention there could have been a visiting psychiatrist who didn't work at the hospital but held clinics there one or two days a week. Since all the medical documents have been destroyed, no one really knows whether or not Mrs. Mason was diagnosed a schizophrenic. So your claim that she was NEVER diagnosed is false.
It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog