The novel Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen shows the reader what life is like inside a mental hospital in 1967. In this autobiographical novel, Susanna Kaysen is admitted to McLean Hospital, where she spent two years forced to follow the hospital's strict rules and subject to the nurse's constant checks and constant invasions of her privacy. The film was directed by James Mangold in 1999, and although it retained some of the major elements of the book, several supporting characters were left out, such as Georgina's boyfriend Wade and drug addict Torrey, and main plots were changed or left out altogether. The story takes place in 1967, in a psychiatric establishment called McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. Susanna Kaysen is admitted to the psychiatric hospital after an unsuccessful suicide attempt shortly after graduating from high school. There, she meets other patients with various illnesses, such as Lisa, a psychopath, Polly, who has self-inflicted burns on most of her body, Georgina, a compulsive liar, and Daisy, obsessed with times by laxatives and roast chicken. . In the film version, Susanna becomes fascinated with Lisa and eventually the two run away from the hospital together. After wandering around for a while, the two find Daisy, who had left the hospital some time before. Daisy allows Susanna and Lisa to stay at her house for a night, and Lisa torments her relentlessly about her new life and her condition that landed her in the hospital in the first place. Daisy commits suicide the next day, forcing Lisa to leave and Susanna to return to the hospital, where she begins to make real efforts to get better. When Lisa is caught and sent back to the hospital, the two have a confrontation which leads to Lisa being placed in the middle of a paper...... mentioned in the book are absent from the film, as are Georgina's. her boyfriend Wade. The endings are also different, the ending of the original novel is much less clear and ambiguous than that of the film, which ends well (Geller). The film was not very faithful to the original source material, but due to the way the original novel was written, some changes had to be made in order to create a cohesive film. The film Girl, Interrupted is important because of its depiction of mental illness. . The film is brutally honest in its depiction, to the point of being uncomfortable to watch at times. I recommend this film because it is entertaining and interesting. It might also encourage someone to read the book, even though the two are different. Girl, Interrupted is an important film about mental illness and the stigma surrounding it, and is definitely worth watching..