Anxiety Issues In Bechdel's Life

Case Study 14.1: David’s coming Out Process 1. What are the developmental challenges for sexual minority youth, as articulated in David’s story? David’s story points out the complicated lives that LGBTQ youth experience, youth who identify as transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide, and studies show that that higher risk stems from their experiences of discrimination and victimization. David’s journey as a gay teen reveals the challenges some young people face just for being who they are.

Despite showing a sense of care for her father, in her graphic novel autobiography Fun Home, Alison Bechdel depicts her reactions and interactions with her father’s death as being very unserious, lighthearted, and at times humorous. The actions and behaviors of her father, Bruce, clearly have an effect on Alison’s behavior and the unusual way that she approaches death. Moreover, the outlining of similarities between her and Bruce, especially concerning death, enriches our understanding of Bechdel’s uniting of the past and present. Bechdel uses Alison’s downplayed mentality towards death, while drawing parallels between the controlling tendencies of Alison and Bruce, to highlight and attempt to explain the urge to repress aspects of one’s identity.

At seven years old Bruce was shy and had little confidence in himself, and that continued throughout most of his young adulthood. Bruce states that when he looks back at himself at seven “[he] can’t really recognize [himself]”. The boy at seven seemed a little bit lost and a little bit sad, but at forty nine he was content and reasonably happy. Once Bruce made the decision to start prioritizing his own happiness it completely changed his personality, and he became much more confident and happy. Thus, as we saw in Bruce, the decisions he made in life , and the consequences of those decisions effected the way he saw himself and interacted with those around

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic illustrates the plight of a lesbian growing up in a household filled with secrets in every nook and cranny. The subtitle, A Family Tragicomic, reveals the tone of the story for the audience by insinuating the existence of adversary in Bechdel’s family dynamics. Through the use of nonlinear chronology, the author reconstructs her childhood and early adulthood around the roles of her parents, Helen and Bruce, and more specifically, the death of her father. Bruce’s affinity for interior design results in him spending ample time on decorating the family home, to the point that it serves as a symbol of Bruce’s repressed desires and in turn, Alison’s liberated desires.

In the graphic novel, we do not really see Bruce connect with his children, but we later do with Alison; thus he redefines his character. In pages 220 and 221, we see Bruce and Alison in the car together, and Bruce starts talking about his past as a young adult. He informs to Alison that there was a boy he was interested in, and he went on describing a description of the boy. As the reader is seeing the sort of trust between Bruce, and Alison, we acknowledge the fact that Bruce is letting part of his family into his personal secretive life that kept alone for such a long time. We seeing the frames on page 220, his facial expression, as it goes from looking stern to widen eyes back to stern, and wide eyes with his hands covering his mouth.

Because he felt so guilty about killing his mentally ill father, over time Bruce successfully blocked the event out of his memory, only remembering his fantasy version, in which his father walked away unscathed (Rosenberg). As if his early childhood trauma was not enough, Bruce was then subjected to an explosion of radiation during a failed scientific experiment. While testing his gamma bomb, Bruce realized that a civilian had found a way onto the testing site where the bomb was to be detonated. Caring not for his own wellbeing, he threw the civilian into a bunker right before the bomb exploded, leaving himself exposed and causing him to become irradiated. The result trauma causes him to morph into an incredibly giant being with the power to lift one hundred tons when enraged, but during this state, Bruce has little control of his actions and has no recollection of his choices and

In the novel Bruce has student shadows which tend to imply he might be having sexual relations with minors. This is abnormal and unacceptable from a societal standpoint; from Bruce’s standpoint and others it acceptable. Bruce is also described as obsessive compulsive with his decorations and furniture. “I grew up to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture” (Bechdel 14). Bruce used his children as a mask for his sexuality, he wanted to seem normal to society.

In some parts of the graphic novel, we see Bruce breaks his stern persona a couple of times. The reader is later shown, that Bruce is actually gay, and that he can have a good time with his children’s babysitter and later revealed secret gay partner, Roy. In page 120, Alison found his secret stash of photos of Bruce cross-dressing with Roy. As we are shown these photos in the graphic novel, our expectations about Bruce, are all crushed. We no longer see Bruce as this imposing authority, perfectionist figure, anymore.

This author has the qualifications of working for the well-known Washington Post newspaper and also being the staff writer of that paper. The audience for this article would be everyone is the United States picking up the newspaper for information. The sources relationship to other resources is very support to people who have anxiety. I really like how the source was mostly in the point of view of someone who was actually going through bad anxiety. I found this source in the National Newspapers Core at the Rio Salado

The young people of the LGBT community do in fact have increased risks when it comes to their mental health. For example: Compared to homeless youth that identify as heterosexual, LGBT adolescents are more likely to have major depressive episodes (41.3% vs. 28.5%), suicidal thoughts (73% vs. 53.2%), at least one suicide attempt (57.1% vs. 33.7%), and posttraumatic stress disorder (47.6% vs. 33.4%) (Keuroghlian, A. S., Shtasel, D., & Bassuk, E. L., 2014). It is also shown that homeless youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, ranging from 13 to 21 years of age are more apt than youth who identify as heterosexual to experience and report symptoms of depression and use street drugs such as, methamphetamines, cocaine and or crack (Keuroghlian, A. S., Shtasel, D., & Bassuk, E. L., 2014).

Yet another form of therapy that is likely to be beneficial to Bruce Wayne is cognitive therapy. The goal of cognitive therapy is to work with the negative, or even covert, thoughts that an individual possesses so that they are replaced by healthier thoughts more in tune with reality. Several studies have found that cognitive therapy is the most effective therapy for a plethora of issues, including depression, anger, and anxiety (Hofmann, Asnaani, Vonk, Sawyer, & Fang, 2012). In the case of Bruce, he might possess distrust of others, and as a result of that, he might withdraw from society and break off any prior social interactions he once had. Because of this, it is vital to work with Bruce’s negative thoughts about how society truly is, and

The boy, who was named Bruce after Bruce Wayne, Billy's favourite superhero, had turned out nothing like his father. Instead, he was a hard, faced, stoic businessman with a wife and two kids, the paragon of Americanisation and a fine product of American capitalism. When he was first born, Billy wanted to call him Dark, Dark Knight but to his relief his partner had stopped him. Billy was still resentful of that, he thought perhaps if they had called him that the boy would have become the next Batman. And they might've been able to sue DC Comics for taking his name.

The difficulties and inequities listed above contribute to the overall health and wellness of LGBTQ people. They experience additional stress due to discrimination and bullying in their schools and jobs which lead to a greater risk of depression and anxiety which leads to suicide and self-harm. LGBTQ teens face isolation and depression because they are navigating their sexuality without any support (Subhrajit).

It is also worth noting that research into the mental health of the LGBT community is lacking (then and now) and that discrimination is legal in many cases (Luckstead 3). Some of the ways that discrimination is legal would be the banning of marriage rights in some states, the absence of sexuality and sexual expression in the working on discrimination clauses around the nation, the ability for a person to be fires or evicted simply because they are LGBT. All of these things can cause stress in the life of members of the LGBT community and in te cause of stress you find causes and additives to mental distress and illness. One could surmise that with the turning tide on the issue of gay rights in the US that the mental health risk here is not work looking into. This would be incorrect and the suicides of LGBT youth in the past couple years confirms this.

Very soon after his parent’s death, he realizes that his calling is to protect people, and he spends his time striving to do this and this continues to motivate him throughout life. Bruce even has to make the choice between love and his job of protecting the people of Gotham, and because of his life’s instinct, he has to choose to protect. Over time, Bruce also learns that this option could save the love of his life and later on, this creates a