Saturday, July 14, 2012
Diagnosing the Joker
The first time I saw The Dark Knight, I was with a friend who is now entering pharmacy school. I believe I was in either my first or second year at the time. About half-way through the movie, I turn to him and say "the Joker has tardive dyskinesia" and then try to explain what that means through the rest of the movie. It actually gives him a pretty sweet back story. The Joker is certifiably insane. My best guess would be severe Bipolar I disorder, anti-social personality disorder, and ADHD. At any rate, he was heavily medicated with typical antipsychotics to the point of developing TD. So, he breaks out, is obviously no longer medicated, but the TD remains as evidence of his former treatment. Tardive dyskinesia is made up of involuntary facial/body movements that become present when neuroleptic drugs are used for an extended period of time, and remain even after the medication is removed. Whenever the Joker is particularly psychotic or in high stress situations, like when he's telling people "how I got these scars," his tongue flicks in and out of his mouth, obvious dyskinetic behavior. Pretty cool huh?
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I remember seeing that with you and you saying that. I've remembered it the last 20 times I've seen The Dark Knight too. I have yet to learn this fact in school though.
ReplyDeleteWait til you get to your psychiatry classes
ReplyDeleteI have been a psychiatric nurse for almost 20 years and also noted the textbook TD. The axis II diagnosis is pretty spot-on conidering the inconsistancies in his stories, and I would consider any of the axis I diagnoses in the schizoaffective spectrum to be a bullseye as well. Sharp eye! Heath Ledger proved himself to be brilliant. It makes me wonder if this was deliberatively scripted or if this was a product of Ledger's research into mental illness. Either way it brings a subtle dimension of the Joker's past into clear perspective for those familiar with this particular side-effect. Given commissioner Gordon's eplanation of the extensive criminal background check for his actual identity, I would chalk this up to another epic HIPAA fail!
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw this movie I never realized or recognized wtf was going on with the Joker. I graduated from nursing school a month ago, sat down tonight to watch this movie again for the first time in years... boom. It hit me. I recognized it right off and turned to google to confirm if I was right. Pretty sweet that they snuck in something like that.
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