Girl, Interrupted

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What are the most likely significant causes of mental health concerns for teenagers today?

Teaching Suggestion: To prepare students for discussing this topic, and with sensitivity in mind for students’ individual circumstances, you might share a brief account of an experience you or someone you know had as a teenager that created a mental health challenge. For example, you might mention divorce, changing schools, disagreements with parents, a car accident, or other events. Students might pair up to develop a list of events or situations they think might cause a young person to experience mental health difficulties. After the pairs have finished, volunteers might share one or two items to create a class-generated list.

• This article from the American Psychological Association outlines the major causes of mental health issues and discusses research that explores why young people are struggling and what can be done to help.

Short Activity

Work together in pairs or small groups to investigate how mental health was treated in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, what the common diagnoses were, and how people were treated after their diagnoses. Design and complete a graphic organizer with columns denoting common mental health diagnoses and treatments.

Teaching Suggestion: To prepare students for this activity, you might suggest they consider looking on the American Psychological Association’s website, which contains articles and information about the topic. After time to research and compile facts, volunteers might share one thing they learned about approaches to mental illness in the first half of the 20th century.

• This article from Mental Health American provides historical context to the discourse on mental health in the 1960s and beyond.
• This brief article in the Psychiatric Times provides a useful historical context of mental health interventions leading up to the 1960s and afterward.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with little background knowledge on this topic might find additional scaffolding helpful, such as a pre-selected list of questions to research in pairs. Those questions might include: “What were the most common mental health diagnoses in the 1960s?” and “How were patients with mental health disorders treated in the 1960s?”

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Has someone you know or have heard of experienced a mental health concern? What happened, and how was this issue handled?

Teaching Suggestion: Because this topic is sensitive, it is important that students be given the option to talk about someone they know, have read about, or have heard about to provide a safe distance from the topic if they choose. An alternative prompt asking students to recall and discuss a literary or film character’s mental health concerns might be a workable alternative for classes or individuals.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who are uncomfortable writing or speaking about this topic and who are more visually inclined may appreciate the option to draw or visually depict their understanding of mental health concerns.