Abnormal Human Behavior In Inside Out

This movie follows the main character Riley, who is an 11-year-old girl from Minnesota who moves to San Francisco with her parents due to her father’s job. Throughout the movie you’re able to see Riley’s 5 different emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust) and how they react to her everyday life.

I would diagnose Riley with adjustment disorder with depressed mood (F43.21) because Riley struggled moving to San Francisco, leaving her friends and hockey team behind. Riley also felt like she couldn’t be sad because her mom told her the first night they arrived to their new home in San Francisco to “keep smiling” for her dad. Where Riley felt like she had to pretend to be happy to help her dad and mom with this new transition in their lives, it wasn’t until Riley went to her new school and had to talk briefly about herself that she was able to reflect that she will no longer ice skate on their pond in the backyard, play ice hockey with her old team and be with her old group of friends. This causes Riley to talk back to her parents and also gets in a fight with her best friend from Minnesota while hearing about a new teammate that joined her old hockey team. Riley tries out for a new team but is unhappy and angry during her tryouts so she ends up losing interest altogether. She is really missing her old life at this point so she ends up skipping school and tries to travel back to Minnesota to have her old life back. While in this part of the movie, Riley loses most of if not all emotions because anger, disgust, and fear were unable to help her feel any sort of emotion what’s so ever. Riley could meet the differential diagnoses for major depressive disorder but I’m unsure of the exact timeframe of her depressive episode and how long it lasted for.

I believe that this film did a really good job portraying someone with adjustment disorder with depressed mood because you’re able to see Riley unable to adapt to her new life right away due to the lack of support she needed from her parents. In result she begins to talk back and loses interest in playing the sport she loves the most. I was able to visually see how individuals process different emotions with this film and it was easy to follow. But I was also able to take away that all emotions are important, not one over the other and sometimes you’re able to have a combination of feelings altogether. Overall, I believe Disney’s Pixar did a wonderful job explaining human emotions and how someone processes life events.