Movie: The Ward

If you have never seen it, I ruin the movie so don't read on if you want to see it...

So my mom likes strange movies. We watched (by we I mean my boyfriend and myself) a couple of my moms movies. Last night we watched the Ward. It was a movie about a girl who gets locked in a mental institution in the 60s. Basically the whole plot of the movie is that she has DID and she is everyone in the mental hospital.

This movie... The movie Identity, there's another movie where the male actor who is the father plays a man with DID (who supposedly gets it when he's an adult) and one more movie I can't recall at the moment. All horror movies... 4 horror movies portraying a person with DID. Is it not obvious why we are having such a difficult time accepting and admitting to DID? It scared the heck out of me.

The movie The Ward... I watched it last night and it made me question just about everything. If my boyfriend was someone within, if my job was internal. If nothing was real and I was living in my head... The last time I felt this was I was "dilusional" and my t wanted me to admit myself. Is it a wonder we have all these thoughts and questions and such a difficult time with this?

Sorry I guess I'm ranting but I really don't like the way the media is making DID out to be. And than tyou have the women who are suing their t for planting false memories and making them believe they have DID when they don't... What's next? Will there ever be a day where doubt or fear does not co exist with DID? eerrrr!!!

I totally agree with you. In the movies, people with any kind of mental illness are often portrayed as completely out of touch or else dangerously homicidal. I get so sick of it. No wonder no one wants to admit to DID or anything else for that matter.

I am still haunted by "What's real and what isn't?" questions. No one close to me has even 1/10th the doubts I have, and it's because of crap like you describe. I have to tune it out or it sends me over the edge.

The movie triggered something last night, perhaps that's why I'm so upset about it. The abuse it showed the girl go through, I couldn't watch it but I saw enough to know. Laying in bed after watching the movie I heard a little girls voice say "please help me" plain as day. My boyfriend was laying right next to me so I didn't say anything or do anything but continue to listen but heard nothing else. I wish I knew what that was...

It's so confusing with this. I have schizo and DID, how to know which voices to listen to and which to ignore. This one was a very clear voice that did not sound angry or hostile, more worried than anything. idk

I'm the same way pgrundy. Normally I block it out, yesterday as soon as I knew I walked away. She runs away from the murderer (who is actually her alter) and runs into the doctors room. She opens the doctors notebook and sees a name with the word protector written in the book. I immediately groaned and got up and walked into the other room. It's so frustrating because they don't realize how much harder it makes things for people like us. Or they do but they don't care, either way it's really frustrating.

I completely agree with you, Session 9 had a DID person. It's the most dramatized disorder out there. It makes me so mad. I am on a quest to make people understand that DID isn't scary. Without telling them I have it, because then all validity is out the window.

Quote from Session 9

This is where they'd keep the extreme patients. The psychotics... You know what they called Ward A? "The snake pit."... Either of you guys scared of the dark? Come on, over here.

Stuff like this actually makes me laugh. I watched shutter island and I laughed the entire time. Luckily I watched it alone. It's just I find it funny how people dramatize psychiatric conditions. But DID is just way, way dramatized.

My boyfriend watched Shutter Island while I was at work the other day. It was another movie of my moms and he said it would probably upset me so I didn't watch it. The problem with what he says I would have issues with... When it shows the descriptions of the blackouts and the personality changes it triggers me and causes me to start drifting off far away. Even movies where they only blackout cause this.

My mom is strange though. Every since I was dx'd DID she's been about movies with DID, horror movies about DID. About 3 weeks about my dx of MPD my mom rented the movie Identity. It became her favorite movie but a movie that terrified me. Up until PC I never knew much about DID other than from the movie Identity, it really scared me out of any kind of acceptance of it at that time. PC showed me it's much different and it's OK, you're not crazy.

Now I'm concerned what these movies are doing. I've already had a lot more dissociation happening in the last few months and the movies seem to trigger it even more, especially when it's a movie about abuse. That kind of abuse actually does happen to people, it's really not fun and games and acting all the time, those scenes, the horror scenes that so many laugh and shy away from, remind some people way too much of real life

I just finished watching this movie. It was good for a scarey movie but isn't in keeping with the philosophy of integration. My alters won't die because they are me. They have memories of things that I am still not able to handle. But as I get stronger and allow myself to know my past, my alters will move in to me. After all we are me.

Compared to most movies based in the 60s, this movie was less dramatic. It wasn't a bad movie per se it just really gets to me when it's made into a horror. As if life weren't enough of a horror already without feeling like we are the horror ourselves. The integration part made me laugh. As if it were like that at all. I wish I could find a good movie that accurately describes what DID patients go through

I love these types of films but have yet to see The Ward.

I am probably imagining everything. Life is too surreal to be reality.

I think mostly I got emotional over this movie because it triggered me, it really isn't a terrible movie but with triggers in it like there were and than to portray this "disorder" in a way that makes someone who was dx'd with it afraid of themselves because of this, it's frustrating. But again I was probably being emotional considering what I was experiencing at the time.

My mom loves movies about DID. She thinks my DID is some sort of trophy to gain. It was her movie I borrowed so all around it just wasn't a good idea for me to watch it. It just made me more frustrated with her as well. I have to work on not letting my emotions control me. I nearly lost it with my boyfriend today too. Something is seriously wrong with me ugh...