Isolation as a Cause of Mental Illness Mental illness is a serious problem. Mental illness is a term used for a group ofdisorders causing severe disturbances in thinking, feeling and relating. The result is adiminished capacity for coping with ordinary demands of life. Mental illnesses can affectpersons of any age, children, adolescents, adults and the elderly. In the short storiesThe Bet, Pauls Case, Silent Snow, Secret Snow the authors use isolation as a causefor mental illness. Not only is the lawyers hate for society caused by isolation in TheBet but it is also the cause of Pauls suicide in Pauls Case. Finally in Silent Snow,Secret Snow Pauls schizophrenia is the product of his personal isolation. The authors ofthese short stories succeed in portraying isolation as a cause for mental illness.In The Bet by Anton Chekhov the lawyers isolation causes his hate for society. Over the course of the lawyers fifteen year sentence he goes through many differentphases. He studies a large amount of literature over the years. This is the only way hecan connect with society without violating the terms of the bet. The lawyers confinementis different from the usual prison. Normally an inmate would be able to interact with other people, but while serving his sentence under the banker, but he did not have thisluxury. This extreme removal from all human interaction is the modern equivalent ofsolitary confinement. This confinement made a strong impression in the first few yearsof his sentence, where he experiences loneliness, boredom and bouts of severedepression. A perfect example of this is when the banker explains what happenedduringthe years of the lawyers imprisonment, ...the lawyer, as far as it was possible to judgefrom his short notes, suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. (Chekhov, 171). The effects of lawyers ordeal were evident in the note that the banker discovered theday before his release. The note reflected th...
