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MENTAL DISORDERS OF RIVER TAM

Dissociative Disorders
Depersonalization Disorder - periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside of" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality.

Mood Disorders
Bipolar Disorder 1 - characterized by at least one manic or mixed episode. There may be episodes of hypomania or major depression as well.

Anxiety Disorders
Panic Disorder - suffers from brief attacks of intense terror and apprehension that cause trembling and shaking, confusion, dizziness, nausea, difficulty breathing, and feelings of impending doom or a situation that would be embarrassing.

Personality Disorders
Pyschopathy/Sociopathy - general term for a range of personality disorders characterized by lack of empathy, socially manipulative behavior, and occasionally criminality or violence.

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Originally posted by GoramMan:

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It's just too easy listening to somebody talk honestly about their feelings and observe their behavior and start asigning these loosely defined and overlapping terms to these clinical observations. I think the process of being studied like this can cause certain people as much or more anxiety about themselves than what ails them. I also think doctors and practitianors within these fields have a high propensity for over analizing thier patients.

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Then there are the drugs. I fucking hate the USA's reliance on drugs. Any drug. I make this very well known to the people around me and they try to keep it out of my sight. But they have so much of the shit (pain medication, mood stabilizers, etc.) it's impossible for them to do so. The proccess for correcting mental disorders with the right drugs for any given patient is so experimental, arbitrary, and long there can be little doubt there is far too much room for error. Serious health and life threatening errors.

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There are people with serious mental problems that do need professional help, thereapy, and medication but I just can't shake the notion that we are at a point of time where in the aggregate, and in most individual cases, less is more.

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But this story can't read like Simon giving a weekly school lecture on the treatment of mental disorders. So that means he will fail a bunch. This will be difficult for him.

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As for establishing which disorders River is afflicted with I have a preliminary list from my notes:


MENTAL DISORDERS OF RIVER TAM

Dissociative Disorders
Depersonalization Disorder - periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside of" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality.

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Mood Disorders
Bipolar Disorder 1 - characterized by at least one manic or mixed episode. There may be episodes of hypomania or major depression as well.

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Anxiety Disorders
Panic Disorder - suffers from brief attacks of intense terror and apprehension that cause trembling and shaking, confusion, dizziness, nausea, difficulty breathing, and feelings of impending doom or a situation that would be embarrassing.

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Personality Disorders
Pyschopathy/Sociopathy - general term for a range of personality disorders characterized by lack of empathy, socially manipulative behavior, and occasionally criminality or violence.

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Originally posted by nbz:
A few thoughts:

1. River's issues are not only mental - she has a physical deformity. her brain was carved out. As such, the best that can be expected of her is to manage the condition. Never cure. Unless you add some psuedo science, and have an ability to repair her brain.

2. If that does happen, she will still have mental/psychotic issues.

3. In either case, people will still be after her.

4. IMO River is a tragic character who does not have too long to live (max 7 years from the start of the pilot... if you get the hint), whether this be due to external factors, or even heavy medication that has an effect.

As for the actual story you are planning - would she be given "duties"? Can't trust her to fly the ship on her own. Can't trust to be sane. Can't trust her full stop. She will always need supervision.

For her, the big duties are walking on her feet, eating apple bits that stay down... wandering the ship... occasionally being useful either through happenstance or design, but not too often. her default state is to be a burden.

As to how I see her arc, she was "born" in the pilot, she learnt to crawl and then walk through the rest of the series/film. She will contine doing so (not much better than she was in, say, OiS) and if she lives long enough (couple of years? four?)eventually she will "age", then maybe die.

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