Movie "thirteen"

The character that I chose to focus on in the movie "Thirteen" is Tracy. Tracy from the beginning of the film was every parent's dream. She was the model seventh grade student, more concerned with her academic achievement than her clothes or her position on the social totem pole. She seemed relatively well adjusted, at least under the circumstances of coming from a broken home and living under her mothers supervision. Tracy had a relatively normal childhood, although at the time her mother, Melanie, barely makes ends meet as a hairdresser. Her father is not in the picture, yet Melanie's dead beat boyfriend, Brady, seems more of a nuisance than help as he is a recovering drug addict that is in and out of their lives. We start to see changes in Tracy's personality when she begins a "friendship" with a girl named Evie from school. It is from this point that Tracy's attitude toward herself, her family, friends, school and life in general no longer meant what they did in the past.

The result of these dramatic changes is leads me to believe that her misbehaviors were symptoms of a Disruptive Behavior Disorder (DBD). Her soon very resistant and rebellious actions toward her mother convinced me that Tracy should be diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), one of Disruptive Behavior Disorder's manifestations. Another manifestation that we soon see in Tracy is delinquency, as she disregards any respect for boundaries and rules made by her mother and even the law, leading to her second diagnoses of Conduct Disorder.

My diagnoses of Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder for Tracy are based off many changes that we see happen to her throughout the movie, forming her into an entirely different person. These changes we see in Tracy start after her first encounter with Evie when they went shopping one afternoon, which she gets peer pressured to shoplift and steal a purse from an old lady. The friendship and peer influence that Evie had on Tracy grew after this encounter and had a immediate impact on Tracy's social behaviors, empathy for others and relationships with those that she once cared about.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder is described as a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior that is developmentally extreme. At least four behaviors used by the DSM to define Oppositional Defiant Disorder must be present for a period of at least 6 months. Tracy's easily demonstrates four of these behaviors such as; loses temper, argues with adults, actively defies complying with adult requests or rules and is angry and resentful (Wicks-Nelson & Isreal, 2009). At first, these unexpected behaviors demonstrated by Tracy were seen as a way for her to be accepted more easily with Evie but it became obvious that Tracy was no longer the innocent girl she was before. For example, she begins to get high at the park with unfamiliar boys and kissing girls to prepare to lose her virginity. A example of losing her temper and arguing with adults is shown by the lose of respect for her mother, which slowly diminishes as she begins arguing almost every time they are together. Children with ODD regularly do not perceive themselves as being argumentative or difficult (Heffner, 2004). It is very usual for such children to blame all their problems on others, which we see Tracy do frequently with her mother. When confronted by her mother, she immediately would get very defensive and blame her for her actions. Not only does she stop following any rules that her mother has set but also is disrespectful to her Aunt and mothers boyfriend.

Another symptom of ODD according to the DSM-IV, states that the behavior must cause clinically meaningful impairment in the child's social or academic functioning (Wicks-Nelson & Isreal, 2009).

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