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What Is The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Mental Health

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Mental Health and Resilience The book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is full of characters struggling with mental health. The protagonist Arnold Spirit Jr., deals with poor mental health due to many factors in his environment; however, he slowly learns to become more resilient to negative situations because of these factors. Arnold's family has been heavily affected by alcohol. As a result of this, he devotes himself to never drinking like his grandma who has never touched a drop. On the other hand, Arnold's father is an alcoholic, which plays a big role in their financial problems. His father spends what little money they have on alcoholic beverages instead of the fuel they need for their car to help take Arnold to and from …show more content…

Arnold looked up to his grandma. Despite his grandmother not touching alcohol, she was killed by a drunk driver. This makes Arnold go through the harsh pains of losing a loved one and through the process of grieving, which leads him to a time of depression. Similar to his grandma, his sister Mary had also lost her life to an alcohol-related situation. Mary was in a house fire but was far too drunk to wake up and realize. After she died, Arnold was soon pulled out of his class to be told of the heartbreaking situation. He was in a state of shock when his dad picked him up and began hysterically laughing in the car. His brain could not begin to understand what happened to him or his sister. Verbal and physical harassment is something Arnold knows well. While reading the book, he states numerous times that people around his tribe and school call him names and beat him up. When moving to a mostly white school, Arnold faced many adversities with bullying and racism for being Indian. Even the teachers believed he was not as well educated as the rest of the kids because he grew up on the reservation. This caused him to separate himself from the outside world as much as

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