Girl, Interrupted

Based on writer Susanna Kaysen's account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the late 1960s.

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New England, 1967. Susanna is depressed and directionless after finishing school. A suicide attempt lands her in Claymore psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with a “borderline personality disorder” Susanna seems saner than her new friends Lisa (a sociopath), Georgina (a compulsive liar), Daisy (a daddy’s girl with an eating disease) and burns-victim Polly. She falls under the hypnotic sway of Lisa, the wildest and most hardened of the bunch. Will Susanna drop anchor at Claymore and perpetually act out like Lisa, or will she finally pull her mind together and leave institutional life behind? The story is based on the autobiography of Susanna Kaysen, who really did spend a year-and-a-half in the McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Massachusetts. (Mark Deming)

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