Did Faith have a mental illness? Trigger Warning

[thrasherpix]

Psychology is overrated, and ironically has given people an unrealistic view of life and human nature, usually in order to sell something, and unfortunately to wash away the pain rather than learn from it while also treating natural pain as unnatural. I don't see Faith as having a mental illness, though she was traumatized (possibly with PTSD) and comes off to me as having endured a lot of neglect as a child. That shapes her, makes her dysfunctional (but that doesn't mean society itself isn't also dysfunctional which contributes to her dysfunction in a vicious cycle she wasn't breaking out of easily), but it doesn't make her ill.

 

[Slayerofslayers]

I don't think Faith has a mental illness, but she definitely has a troubled past and issues that influenced her decision to start doing evil things and the evil person she became. She certainly has a lot of anger and pain and insecurity from her mother's neglect of her and not having a father around and things like that. Ultimately her evil doings are her own choices, which is what makes her redemption arc so great. Because she isn't like vampires who have the excuse of not having a soul for doing bad things but a human with a soul who choose to do wrong. However, she was still able to turn her life around and do good again and have people who care about her in her life even though she did terrible things. It provides hope that anyone can turn their life around and make amends for doing terrible things.

 

[Monkey Pants]

https://did%3D04da14d95f0de3d27754750788fe91b5a8d35149%3Bid%3D141743243045%3Bkey%3DfPeSjq_8kAwKpBWremszaQ%3Bname%3Dwithconscience

This is the post that originally got me thinking about this. It's really interesting and makes a lot of sense.

 

[November]

I get confused - isnt BPD a personality disorder? There is a criteria to fit to be diagnosed. Are certain personality traits automatically mental illness?

And treatment for BPD is a therapy called DBT - medication is not required nor recommended yet many mental illness are "supposed" to be medicated? So is BPD a mental illness or do people with BPD just display poor choices which result in poor mental health?

She also displays traits of a teenage girl. Shock horror. Lock her up.

 

[Bluebird]

People can have difficult childhoods without it leading to mental illness.

I agree. Her childhood didn't seem that bad, although it did obviously affect her future relationships. Children tend not to know how 'bad' their upbringing is, because to them it is their normal reality, and you can't miss what you never had.

 

[thetopher]

I think PTSD is a given considering what Faith went through. She was a slayer without any of the support structure that Buffy had and relied upon. She didn't have any sort of loving family member (at least Gunn had his sister) and clearly had a lot of emotion issues- parental issues (desperate for acceptance from a parental figure), trust issues, fear of intimacy, general high levels of cynicism, hot-tempered, etc.

I wouldn't say that was an illness though, more a bunch of 'issues'/ emotional problems that she needed to work through- on her own as it turns. I always figured that Faith got some sort of serious counseling in prison which helped balance her out. Either that or Angel sent her a self-help book about spanking you inner moppet or whatever. 🙂

 

[Last Watcher]

Had a little think about this....so here are my thoughts.......

Ok, to start with I think Faith had ADHD.
Now I don't know much about US schools (being a brit) but I would be very surprised if any school in the less affluent area's of Boston, in the butt end of the
20th century, would have had the ken or even an interest in diagnosing a child as having ADHD. She would just have been labelled a problem child & be treated
as such. This combined with a mother who didn't know/care what she was doing would ultimately lead her to drop out of school completely.
Then we have the events laid out in 'Go ask Malice'. There we have a perfect storm of Being called as a Slayer, possession & her Watcher (The only adult she ever
cared about/trusted) being killed right in front of her. Easily enough to trigger a generous helping of PTSD.
So we have a heady mix of ADHD/PTSD, not at all helped by Kakistos following her to SunnyD. Then add to that seeing, in Buffy, what a Slayers life could be
like then having that denied to her when the group effectively shut her out.......
I'm actually surprised she lasted until the incident with the deputy Mayor finally pushed her over the edge.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

Ok, to start with I think Faith had ADHD..

Eliza has ADHD so that may have unintentionally come across in the performance rather than being an intended trait for the character. Also I think if Faith was supposed to have some sort of "problem" then it would've been revealed within the story since it would be a big part of her character.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Forgive me if I am a bit dismissive about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (up to Revision 5 now), but it is utter crap. They take a set of observations, give it a three- or four-word name and the corresponding acronym and claim to have a diagnosis. There is no physical evidence in most cases - an autopsy would not show any differences from normal brain tissue. And the subjectivity of the opinions that form the "test" are notoriously unreliable. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder used to be called childhood. But in the Yuppie era, it had to be medicalized to explain to parents that their children are likely to do things the parents did not understand or want and were not in control of. In many cases, what was called ADHD was caused by food sensitivities that were undiagnosed and certain items like food colouring have been accepted when they should have been banned by the (corrupt) Food and Drug Administration. To give another example of subjectivity, someone who had an inexplicable fear of something may be considered to suffer mental illness whereas it may be a karmic memory. And someone who had a fear of a demonstrably dangerous situation would not be considered to be mentally ill.

I do see why someone would call Faith's condition to be PTSD but there is a difference in her situation - PTSD is diagnosed if a person shows symptoms after the threat is over. For Faith, as a slayer, the war is still on and will not end for her until she dies, so she is not "post" anything - she lives with the constant threat of lethal force being used against her by vampires and demons who want her dead. This is not like a soldier who comes back from a war and is still nervous about any sudden noise he hears even though the threat is over for him. I am not saying psychology does not have its uses - after WWI, a number of people had some limbs turn useless but hypnosis could restore their function. When this was not done, a number of soldiers who would have otherwise led normal lives had these "useless" limbs amputated, so this was a triumph for psychology. But speculating that someone has a mental illness is not proof unless it is proven by objective facts or demonstrated cures.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

Interesting question. For me, the question of whether or not someone possesses a mental illness or not has to do with the degree to which they can handle their mental issues. To a degree, mental issues (that sometimes get misclassified as illness) are natural, normal and also healthy to a degree too (your body/mind informing you of psychic/spiritual/psychological issues that require attention). Ignoring the mind/body's call to address such issues, hiding from them or running from them or ignoring them and allowing them to fester and get worse (or relying too heavily on drugs instead of also devoting attention to them and seeking the resolution) is evidence that one "can't handle it", and it is at this point that I myself would classify someone as possessing mental "illness". Bear in mind that the block can be unconscious in nature too, and that the person might not be aware of it.

Of course, there are cases of mental illness that are so severe that they can't really be solved anymore; although I think far more cases get classified this way than are actually the case. Severity of symptoms is not by itself proof that the illness is no longer curable.

I only bring all of this up because this is how I feel about mental illnesses and whether someone "has it" or not. In other words, I am asking myself to what extent I feel that A) Faith is aware of the underlying issues somehow (on whatever levels) and is trying to work out the underlying sources (in her own way, explicitly or not so much) and B) if she is getting by in life well enough despite it (in other words, is she "handling" it well). Expressed another way, are Faith's problems directly attributable to mental health, or only indirectly or not at all? If the former, I'd be inclined to say she has something, possibly ptsd; if the later, than I would say no, she has problems of the kind and nature that most of us have, despite her more unusual beginnings and behavior.