Out Of Your Mind - Mabel

"All of a sudden, I miss everyone..."

Something is wrong with Mabel. She's a dutiful housewife, spending her domestic days caring for three young children and keeping a home for her working husband. What seems like, and is treated like, eccentric behaviour by those around her, gradually escalates into concerning mental health deterioration.

Over the course of the film, we see the dynamic between Mabel and her husband Nick, a man in denial about his wife's condition. Whilst he is kept occupied outside the house during the day with a job, she is cooped inside, running chores and trying to manage the stresses of raising their kids. Yet it is not only the demands of motherhood that is causing her distress. The film begins with her offloading the children to her mother for the day, whilst she will end up drinking into the night and bringing home a stranger from a bar. Something else is going on.

This couple are contrasted with their own parents, an older generation who lived the lives Mabel and Nick are currently living, at a time when social dynamics of family life was probably quite different. Are we seeing the beginning of mental health matters, particularly that of women and mothers at this specific period in time, and the stifling of women in general being addressed?

Mabel exhibits harmlessness and quirkiness, but ever increasingly seems to be unable to cope and Nick doesn't know what to do. Eventually, she'll be sectioned and spend time away to recuperate, yet this will prove to have been fruitless. Her return home shows she has likely been pumped with drugs and it is revealed she received shock treatment. She is no better than when she left and most probably even worse.