Introduction
Rue Bennett is one of the ambiguous and contradictory TV characters of the series “Euphoria.” Rue is a 17-year-old teenager who leads a dreary, lonely, and hopeless struggle for her soul. She is a girl with a drug addiction dating a girl who recently arrived in the city. “Euphoria” demonstrates how hard it is for Rue to fight her demons on the way to adulthood and how she feels when almost no one cares about her problems. She has mental disorders and suffers from constant neuroses. Despite her love for her loved ones, she often acts contrary to the advice of relatives. With her character, Rue can have many diagnoses: attention deficit disorder, depression, and borderline disorder. Nevertheless, looking from the outside allows a viewer to discover how, in the most vivid and complete degree, Rue demonstrates such an ailment as bipolar disorder; this condition causes extreme mood swings. Rue Bennett is a character in the TV series “Euphoria,” who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Identifying the Character
Rue Bennet is the main character of the TV series “Euphoria.” She was born completely healthy, but after the onset of the transition age, her parents began to notice the strange behavior of the teenager. The daughter stopped looking at one point for a long time without being distracted by extraneous stimuli. A medical examination was scheduled, which showed the presence of mental abnormalities. The child was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In addition, Rue suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and due to constant panic attacks, Rue had to stay in the clinic.
After panic attacks in the hospital, she was given medication that relieved her condition. It was then that Rue realized that “under something,” it was easier for her to exist in this world. The heroine steals her sick dad’s pills and then her mom’s sleeping tablets. Even after an overdose and rehabilitation, this heroine continues to be abused. With medicines, Rue drowns out the frustration and pain that life brings her. Thus, she tries to get rid of her addiction, then plunges even more into the abyss of passion for narcotic substances. The impetus for a “normal” life becomes her friendship with a new classmate, Jules. This friendship arises between the young girls but becomes more serious over time. However, the problem is that they never talked openly about their feelings. Jules prefers a free relationship, it hurts Rue, but she keeps everything to herself.
Probable Mental Health Diagnosis
The rapid cyclical nature of Rue, as one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder, is observed throughout the TV series, and drugs aggravate the situation. Rue acts ambiguously in any case, making it impossible to understand whether she is a “positive” character or a “negative” one. For example, this difference can be seen in how Rue manifests herself with Jules and when alone. As a result, she can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder is a mental disorder of an endogenous plan, that is, caused by internal factors, not external influences. As a rule, it is perceived as a group of brain disorders that cause sharp fluctuations in mood, energy, and a person’s ability to function (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). It is assumed that Rue is more likely to have type II bipolar disorder, but this requires confirmation through a thorough examination. It is known that every bipolar disorder reduces psychosocial functioning and is more often associated with excessive mortality from cardiovascular diseases and suicide (McIntyre, 2020). In brief, bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, and Rue, with such a diagnosis, is characterized by a change of periods: from deep depression to violent joy, from excitement to inhibition. Sometimes depression can be accompanied by euphoria — this condition is called mixed.
Furthermore, since childhood, Rue has experienced a range of negative emotions, starting with the experience of her father’s death and ending with casual sexual relations. In this case, McIntyre (2020) confirms that such adverse events experienced in childhood are more associated with the development and manifestation of bipolar disorder. The mental instability of people with bipolar disorder seriously reduces the quality of life and, disrupts social interactions, hinders objective perception of the world (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Despite the severity of the diagnosis, the disease is treatable.
The development of bipolar disorder is constantly provoked by internal factors associated, as a rule, with an imbalance of neurotransmitters of the brain — biologically active substances responsible for the transmission of nerve impulses. Such an imbalance may result from the impact of several causes, including heredity, social environment, and psychological state (Sandstrom, 2019). As mentioned earlier, the heroine has experienced many unpleasant moments, especially in adolescence, when any problem seems to be the end of the world. It turns into an absolute and becomes a cause for constant mental anguish, doubts, and escapism. In addition, it is believed that the type of personality can cause the occurrence of bipolar disorder. The diagnosis of bipolar disorder is often given to melancholics, characterized by constant anxiety and unsettled and emotional instability. However, Rue manifests a combination of hyperactive: active, friendly, and initiative and dysthymic: pessimistic, closed, depressive psychological types.
Alternating and recurring scenes of mania and depression characterize bipolar disorder. The break between the phases is called intermission, a distinctive feature of the “lull” period is the restoration of the psyche to a normal state when a person can lead a normal lifestyle. Any of the phases can range from several weeks to several years. Bipolar disorder can manifest itself in only one phase — manic or depressive — or two simultaneously. In this case, one can talk about a mixed episode of bipolar disorder; it is expressed in the manifestation of symptoms of both phases: sudden mirth against the background of melancholy, motor excitement with depressing thoughts, and more.
How the Character Represents the Diagnosis
Rue, for several TV episodes, shows sharp mood swings and increased excitability in connection with such behavior conditions, a sudden change of increased activity to the appearance of apathy, the desire to lie down and do nothing, the formation of thoughts and actions that are inappropriate to some situations and unusual for the character of this person. Some people often explain this behavior as fatigue, problems at school, and a “complex” character. They wonder why it is impossible to change an individual’s mood with “heart-to-heart conversations.” However, such symptoms may include accumulated fatigue, mood swings, and signs of bipolar disorder.
Rue is sarcastic and withdrawn, and her struggle with mental illness and drug addiction often highlights her hidden negative personality. While Rue is looking for herself and her destiny, she is as lonely, scared, and lost as possible because it seems to her that she is superfluous in this “celebration of life.” This uncertainty leads to the fear of dreaming, planning, and acting because there are too few precise inputs and too many unknown variables in the equation that society requires to solve successfully. One cannot say that Rue is antisocial, she knows how to get along with people, and even has friends. Although Rue pretends to be apathetic and cold-blooded, she is deeply emotional and caring, which is evident in her relationship with Jules, Fezco, and Gia. Rue even depicts the clothes her father wore before he fell ill and died, showing how hard it was for her to survive his death and how the heroine still has not recovered.
Conclusion
Summarizing the above, it is necessary to state that Rue Bennett is the main character of the series “Euphoria,” which can be diagnosed as bipolar disorder because of her nature, style of behavior, and actions. Throughout several episodes, a viewer sees how her image constantly changes and transforms, making it quite challenging to form a clear image of her. On the one hand, she can go to extremes and be friendly, sociable, and proactive; she can show anger and aggression, love and care, and all these emotions often have an illogical sequence. On the other hand, the explanation for this behavior is the negative emotions she experienced as a child when her dad died and she had casual sexual relations. As a “treatment” for her illness, she preferred drugs, periodically “tying up” with them and starting to use them again. Everything changes when Jules appears at school, and something more than just communication and friendship begins to happen between Jules and Rue.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). DSM-5-TR ™ classification. American Psychiatric Association Publishing.
McIntyre, R. S., Berk, M., Brietzke, E., Goldstein, B. I., López-Jaramillo, C., Kessing, L. V.,… & Mansur, R. B. (2020). Bipolar disorders. The Lancet, 396(10265), 1841-1856. Web.
Sandstrom, A., Sahiti, Q., Pavlova, B., & Uher, R. (2019). Offspring of parents with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression: a review of familial high-risk and molecular genetics studies. Psychiatric Genetics, 29(5), 160-169. Web.