Elizabeth Halsey’s Depiction of Antisocial Personality Disorder in Bad Teacher

Introduction to Elizabeth Halsey and Bad Teacher

The movie Bad Teacher was one of the top-rated comedy films of 2011. The story occurs at John Adams Middle School, where most characters play the teacher role. This story’s main characters are Elizabeth Halsey, Scott Delacorte, Russell Gettis, and Amy Squirrel. However, the focus of this paper will surround the main character, Elizabeth Halsey, portrayed by Cameron Diaz. At the start of this movie, our gold-digger Elizabeth Halsey chooses to quit her job to focus on her upcoming wedding to a rich man. However, once she got home, her fiance told her that he wanted to break up the engagement and cut all ties with her because of her ridiculously lavish spending sprees in the previous month.

Therefore, in the later scene, Elizabeth drove herself back to the school in a less fancy and luxurious car to continue her teaching career. That is when our support character Amy Squirrel greeted her in the hallway and called her out by saying that she knew that Elizabeth was cruising through last school year by doing the bare minimum. While also pointing out Elizabeth will likely get her acts together this time around since she lost the financial support from her fiance. But instead of acknowledging her flaws and wrongdoings, she replied to Amy, stating that she had caught her fiance in bed with another man, which was a blatant lie. She told this lie in order to attract sympathy to her narrative.

Instead of sourcing the original issue to her lavish spending spree, she has determined that she was not attractive enough to the rich people because her breasts were not big enough. Therefore, throughout the later storyline, her main focus was to save enough money to pay for a breast implant through all means possible. She even went as far as seducing the Chicago state testing officials to get her hands on the answer key to cheat towards this goal because the first place would be entitled to a sizeable bonus.

When the new, handsome, and rich substitute teacher, Scott Delacorte, transferred to the school, she also went to the extremes of actively trying to separate Amy and Scott from dating each other by constantly belittling Amy in front of Scott. While all of that was happening, Russell also showed affection towards Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Elizabeth ignored him because he was a gym teacher and was nowhere as wealthy as the substitute teacher. Although this movie portrayed several twisted values and some questionable psychological behaviors, it was still a perfect reflection of reality. Because Elizabeth eventually redeemed herself by looking beyond the money and choosing to be with the gym teacher towards the end.

Symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder of Elizabeth Halsey

According to the American Psychological Association, the definition of antisocial personality disorder is a behavioral issue in which the person shows a lack of empathy towards others and a lack of sense of remorse for their wrongdoings (APA). Although Elizabeth Halsey did not quite develop all of those extreme symptoms, it is still important to note that some of her self-centered actions do have some close resemblance to this disorder. Therefore, if left untreated, it could progress into something much worse, enabling or triggering more severe types of irresponsible behaviors or illegal actions.

In a 2017 study published in the Journal of Psychiatry & Neurological Sciences, a clinical researcher conducted a study in Turkey on 119 test subjects with antisocial personality disorders. The researcher would like to study whether or not there is a correlation between substance abuse and harmful behaviors and has concluded that there is a strong correlation between the two variables (Durmaz, 2017). Looking back at the movie, Elizabeth Halsey had an addiction to marijuana and is a hefty user. There was one scene in the movie where Elizabeth’s lighter died, and so she was scrambling to find a new lighter to smoke her pipe. She even went as far as visiting multiple storefronts on a cold Christmas day to buy a lighter for her addiction. This part of the movie corroborates the previous study that concluded that people with antisocial personality disorders are likely also people with a history of substance abuse issues.

Because of that reliance on drugs, she has a compulsion of being in total control. As portrayed in the movies, she is easily angered and frustrated. Similar to when her addiction arises, when she sees something that is not going her way, she wants to change it by force, as witnessed in the scene where she actively tries to undermine Amy by belittling her in front of Scott. If she cannot get her way, she will prevent others from getting it by destroying it at all costs, as witnessed in the scene where she staged a fake sound recording of Scott and herself engaging in sexual intercourse. Once she finished, she sent that clip over to Amy to trick Amy into believing that Scott cheated on her.

Nature Versus Nurture of Elizabeth Halsey’s Disorder

Another vital evaluation metric of Elizabeth Halsey’s antisocial personality disorder is perhaps her family values. Although the movie did not portray Elizabeth’s childhood memories or experiences in any particular way, it is still pretty evident that she had a lot of bad parental influences during her childhood ages. According to a 2012 clinical research published in London’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health Journal, the researchers performed a study on a random sample of 922 preschoolers and one random parent of each child. The randomly chosen parent must exhibit at least one of the hostile personality disorders, including antisocial personality disorder, to evaluate the harmful effects of that parent’s mental illness on the child.

At the end of the study, the researchers have concluded that those personality disorders from the parents have a notably dramatic effect on their children’s psychiatric symptoms. In addition, this correlation is further amplified if the biological parents are not living together (Berg, Turid; Wichström, Lars, 2012). Therefore, this study shows that parental psychiatric wellbeings are immensely influential to their child’s mental health. Conversely, if the child grew up with a psychological problem, and especially an antisocial personality disorder, it is strongly likely that their parents also suffered similar psychiatric impediments. Thus, it is safe to conclude that antisocial personality disorders are an act of nurture rather than genetic inheritance through nature.

Treatment Suggestions for Elizabeth Halsey’s Disorder

As previously established, the parent’s psychological wellbeings are immensely more influential to their offspring’s psychiatric health. Therefore, it is abundantly clear that the best way to alleviate or prevent psychological disorders is to ensure that the parents are in an excellent psychological state so that they do not adversely affect the child. According to a 2015 treatment recommendation article published in The Journal of Mental Health Counseling, the research author emphasized that there is no evidence of any effective psychosocial interventions or clinical utility to treat antisocial personality disorders (Hatchett, 2015). Thus, there must be a system implemented for early discovery. The earlier, the better.

However, according to a research study published in the American Journal on Addictions, clinical researchers performed a study on a random sample of 738 individuals who suffered various degrees of psychological issues. The researchers then split the test subjects into three groups based on their use of crack cocaine. The researchers wanted to see if there is any correlation between their abusive behavior to their use of crack cocaine. They have concluded that the confirmed crack cocaine group has a significantly higher rate of antisocial personality disorder than the other groups of people out of all three groups. To put it in perspective, the confirmed group of people was 25%, while the other two groups were hovering around 9%. Therefore, they further suggested an intricate link between acts of violence and psychological issues to the overall drug use, specifically with crack cocaine. (Kessler, Henrique, Terra, Faller, Stolf, Peuker, Benzano, and Pechansky, 2012.) Therefore, suppose Elizabeth Halsey is a friend to the author of this disorder paper in light of that evidence. It might be wise for the author to convince her to reduce her reliance on drugs and alcohol incrementally and eventually free of drugs. There might also have to be counseling sessions to find a way to correct her twisted and skewed family values.

Movie Depiction of Elizabeth Halsey’s Disorder

This movie was initially meant to be a comedy, and therefore, it did not place a strong emphasis on the accuracy of psychological disorders. Hence, it is always a good idea to take what is presented visually with some level of skepticism. For example, in the scene where Elizabeth kept a stash of marijuana in her drawer, it is most likely a stretched portrayal used as visual stimuli in an effort to get the incorporated humor across to the audience. Furthermore, it is unimaginable to think that such a teacher exists in a middle school classroom. Similarly, some of the crimes that she has committed, such as smoking marijuana in a middle school gym, accepting bribes from the parents, or the utter disregard of academic integrity, are hardly acceptable as a decent human being, let alone a homeroom teacher. Thus, even though this movie has provided some vivid definitions of psychological disorders. At the end of the day, it was still meant to be a comedy for all of us to enjoy.

References

APA. (n.d.). APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association. Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://dictionary.apa.org/antisocial-personality-disorder

Berg-Nielsen, T., & Wichström, L. (2012). The mental health of preschoolers in a norwegian population-based study when their parents have symptoms of borderline, antisocial, and narcissistic personality disorders: At the mercy of unpredictability. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 6 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-6-19

Durmaz, O. (2017). Antisosyal kişilik bozukluğunda zarar verici davranış örüntülerinin ve madde kullanım profilinin dikkat eksikliği hiperaktivite bozukluğu belirtileri ile ilişkisi: Journal of psychiatry and neurological sciences. Dusunen Adam, 30(3), 194-201. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5350/DAJPN2017300303

Hatchett, G. T. (2015). Treatment guidelines for clients with antisocial personality disorder. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 37(1), 15-27. Retrieved from https://libris.mtsac.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/treatment-guidelines-clients-with-antisocial/docview/1644091682/se-2?accountid=12611

Kessler, F. H., Terra, M., Faller, S., Stolf, A., Peuker, A., Benzano, D., & Pechansky, F. (2012). Crack Users Show High Rates of Antisocial Personality Disorder, Engagement in Illegal Activities and Other Psychosocial Problems. American Journal on Addictions, 21(4), 370–380. https://doi-org.libris.mtsac.edu/10.1111/j.1521-0391.2012.00245.x