This is a write up on the film Do Patti, starring Kajol, Kriti Sanon AND Kriti Sanon.
It is about twin sisters, and how they tackle domestic violence and physical abuse.
The film involves various mental health aspects, including the clear difference in two sisters who look the same, but whose behavior and whose coping mechanism to deal with challenges are very different.
What we see is one girl who gets hyperventilation, shortness of breath, crying spells right from childhood, when something unexpected happens or a challenge appears. On the other hand, the twin sister looks alike, but behaves differently: shouting, screaming, rebelling, hitting out. In psychiatry parlance, we call this difference as internalizing and externalizing, and we see it very often straight from childhood, which means it is not a learned behavior, but partly an innate, genetically coded behavior. This is important for all to understand that the child’s behavior is often impacted much more by the genetic makeup than the learned behavior that we might see.
It is the job of a Psychiatrist to determine whether the behavior that we are seeing in a child internalizing or externalizing is from a very young age, suggesting a genetic component, or is learned behavior because of the way the family dynamics play out. This is why it often takes us longer for a psychiatric assessment of a child, especially because we want to understand the family dynamics, the personality and the psychology of parents, grandparents, siblings and other caregivers.
In the film, we also see that when the domestic violence case is in court, the husband tries to
put the blame on the protagonist Saumya because she is mentally unwell and is taking medicines. This is a legal and psychiatric myth. Anyone who takes medicines or treatment from a psychiatrist or psychologist does not mean that that person is insane, telling a lie or cannot be believed. Your ability to give evidence in court, complain to the police and prove what you are saying is not influenced by you taking treatment from a psychiatrist.
In the movie, the husband alleges that the victim wife has acute depression (!) [The technical term is “depressive disorder” and it is not acute or chronic, clinical or non clinical; it is either Depression or NOT] He goes on to say she keeps popping pills, leading to irrational crying, making up stories, hallucinations, phobias, fear of heights and Suicidal thoughts.
We then come to the issue of anger in the husband of the protagonist. Anger: wWhich leads to violence, verbal, physical beating, injuring, pushing, burning, all of which are normalized as “It happens”
The husband’s cavalier (and chauvinistic) attitude towards domestic violence is further explained when he says, “This is not attempt to murder”; burning someone in the streets, is attempt to murder.
Please remember, any violence that you suffer from at the hands of your domestic partner is dangerous and will escalate and will pose a risk to your physical and mental health, and more often than not, leads to death, either by accidental injury, deliberate homicide or suicide because of helplessness and hopelessness!
Please always seek help and put domestic violence to an end or leave the relationship as early as possible. You will carry scars of violence all your life unless you get proper psychiatric treatment.