A... Friend?... in Need of Help

I wrote this essay, if it can even be described as such, for Abnormal Psychology. We were asked to pick a television character who suffers with some form of mental illness. Naturally, everyone in the class handed in papers about Monk and House. I chose a different route.

Here's what I wrote:

There are many people out in the world who suffer from depression. Most of them, despite the help and guidance of friends, refuse to believe they are even in a situation that requires them to seek medical assistance. They simply roam the world unable to think, be happy, be productive, make decisions, or simply exist in regular society. As for people (using the term as loosely as possible) I know, there is one in particular who could certainly do with medical assistance to deal with his very severe case of depression; Snuffleupagus.

Snuffleupagus lives on Sesame Street with many of his other puppet friends. With exception to Bert and Ernie (a different medical case entirely), most of the puppets seem rather happy with their lives. They are all friends, and get along rather well. The only problem is that Snuffleupagus has a tendency to experience the most extreme cases of depression. The most likely cause of this symptom is the fact that he is the imaginary friend of another puppet. I don’t know much about puppet imaginations, but seeing as puppets have no brains in their Styrofoam heads, it must be difficult for Snuffleupagus to go day-to-day with the knowledge that he was created from the mental projections of a creature with no mental functioning. He spends most of his days moping around the sidewalks of Sesame Street, for he is too big to fit in any houses. He moves slowly, gets very little done, and is always talking with a very long and slow drawl, almost as if every sentence may very well be his last. He does have small bursts of happiness, however, in which he and Big Bird will go about and do something productive, but for the majority of his life, Snuffleupagus is completely useless and unable to exist in society.

It is clear from his actions that Snuffleupagus should seek help immediately for Major Depression. I am not entirely sure what the medical world can do for an imaginary puppet elephant, but if there is hope out there for a better life, then he should certainly seek it. It is clear that, through the projections of the televised world, Snuffleupagus is in desperate need of help. He is suffering from a rather accurate depiction of Depression, and unless he tries to find a way to deal with his issues, he may very well end up hurting himself... though I’m not sure that imaginary friends killing themselves is considered “suicide”.

On a side note: this brings up lots of questions about Big Bird’s mental state. If he is imagining a friend who suffers with depression, I think it’s safe to assume that there are some unspoken issues going on with the focal puppet as well. Perhaps the real issue isn’t with Snuffleupagus, but rather with Big Bird, who is projecting all of his emotions onto his imaginary friend. Just something to think about.