Seeing the Backrooms movie as someone who works in the psych field actually made the movie super interesting to watch. I’m gonna put a mild spoiler warning here but I’m going to keep the details as minimal as possible.
I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about Mary, the therapist for Clark, in the film and I actually think she was a really interesting character. She seems like someone who is fairly good at her job because she clearly cares about her clients enough to try to help Clark. The thing is, when you work in psych care in particular, there’s two extremes you can fall into as a provider. The first is the Authoritarian type, which are people who tend to want to have control of the client. They view the client as insubordinate and a subject to control. On the opposite end, you have what are called Rescuers, who see their clients as someone who needs to be saved or fixed. They see their clients as fragile or incapable, and it creates this codependency in the client that’s extremely detrimental to their treatment. Mary is absolutely a rescuer, and it actually is such a disservice to Clark and puts both of them at risk because she doesn’t maintain healthy boundaries with him.
From what little the film shows it also seems like the type of therapy Clark is receiving from Mary is called Internal Family Systems, which I think is an extremely poor choice for a client like Clark. IFS if used correctly can be very effective for PTSD treatment in particular, but because of how it works (basically your mind is a bunch of different parts led by a core Self) it has a lot of potential risks. The biggest ones are that if not done correctly, IFS can increase paranoia and develop into psychosis, it can create false memories, and privatize systemic issues. So with a client like Clark, who is a recently divorced alcoholic without stable housing and owns a business that is struggling, IFS would likely be very harmful to him. Mary providing IFS instead of something like EMDR, which would be much much more effective for someone like Clark, is actually incredibly irresponsible for her to do. She, as a producer, should know that IFS is not going to be a good fit for Clark, but from what little we know it seems like this has been a regular and ongoing treatment that she has kept him on despite it clearly not helping him.
When Clark shows up to their next appointment, Mary makes another huge mistake: she fails to inform others about Clark. Mary thinks that Clark is experiencing psychosis, likely due to alcohol withdrawls as she asks him when he last drank. Therapists are mandated reporters, which means that if they think a client is a risk to themselves or others they have to report it to authorities. It’s why Clark asked about being 51-50’d, that’s an involuntary psych hold and those usually get called by family or mandatory reporters because they are concerned for that person. But Mary, seeing a client who she knows has an alcohol dependency, anger issues, and a lack of support system talk about hidden doorways and endless rooms, doesn’t call the cops to do a wellness check. She lets this man who is clearly having psychotic break and is going through alcohol withdrawls which are extremely dangerous due to the fact that seizures are fairly common in those cases, shout about how he’s going to show everyone before driving away. Mary never reports this like she absolutely should have, she lets her client whom she thinks is in psychosis and suffering from Alcohol withdrawals, just drive off. She doesn’t report this, if she had maybe Clark’s employees and Clark himself would still be alive. She also decides later on to go meet Clark on her own, which was extremely unprofessional and stupid of her to do. She absolutely should have contacted the police and had them make sure they were both ok, but she doesn’t do that. It’s such a huge breach of boundaries that it actually left me in shock when I saw that scene because that is one of the biggest things drilled into you when you start in this field. You do not meet patients outside of work, you need to make sure you’re leaving your work at the office and your time off resting to avoid burn out. Her going to Clark’s company was so incredibly inappropriate for her to do that it actually horrified me.
Mary is a good example of what a bad therapist looks like. She may have had good intentions, but she actions actively harmed her client and other people died as a result. She failed to inform the authorities about the risk Clark currently posed, and instead stayed quiet which led to multiple deaths. Honesty, the movie was incredible but wow was Mary a great example of a bad provider in a way that isn’t often shown.
germansingergirl
izzy806
amandla
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
origamiaround
