FINAL EXAM

COMMUNICATION AND TEAM BUILDING

Name: Saad Banat

Student ID: 924820919
“Patch Adams” Robin Williams, 1998.

1. Imagine that you have to stay in mental hospital for a week, discuss what kind
of behavioral changes may occur on you .

Personally, if I was to imagine the impact staying in a mental hospital would do to me, I think
it has morw to do with the type of person I am before entering.

Trying to imagine my experience, I think that it would be very overwhelming at first. I blieve
that, at the beginning, I would struggle to find comfort in the environment, especially if the
patients’ actions were extremely abnormal. Then, later, would expect one of two scenarios,
coping or cracking.

Starting off with he first scenario, the positive one, I think that after some time I’d start
getting used to the people, their behaviors and patterns. I think this will help me to open my
mind even more. I think that the diverse, perhaps chaotic atmosphere, will help me be able
to live my own life, by my own morals and beliefs, regardless of the surrounding
environment. Also, I believe that my experience would help me futher communicate, more
efficiently. Certainly, we can not communicate with severely mentally ill people the same
way we do with other individuals we come accross in our day-to-day life. As we have seen in
the first scenes of the movie “Patch Adams”, when Patch helps Rudy get over his fears to go
to the bathroom, it is not possible to try and communicate with people looking from your
perspective only, but instead, we sometimes have to try leaving our personal “reality” and
try seeing things from their’s in order to be able to reach them; I think that is one of the most
important lessons spending some time in a mental hospital would teach me about
communicating with people and living my life in a world that I share with other humans.

Moving on to my other prediction, I think that if I turned out to be weaker than the
challenges, or too vulnerable to the chaos around me, or, if I have let go of my own reality so
much that I couldn’t mentally go back to it. This kind of chain of events would probably put
me in denial of my own problems as a human being, as well as form enormous
communication barriers between me and other patients or even doctors if I unfortunately
developed some kind of mental illness myself, that either lasts as long as I am in the mental
hospital, or one that sticks to me throughut my life after or I might develop PTSD, reacting
beyond control when something triggers the mental hospital experience.
2. Have you ever been in a situation that you have to pretend that you are “like”
them.

Yes, I definitely have. My family and I have moved to Saudi Arabia in 2007, when I enrolled in
4th grade. I have met my two best friends in class and literally grew up with them. My friends
and I were always simple kids, playing video games every minute of free time we have at
home and talking about video games every break we had at school; easy to say, we were not
considered the “popular” kids. As the years passed and we approached highscool together,
some time around probably 9th grade, if I remember correctly, I have started to develop a
more social personality. I started believing in myself more as an individual, grew more
confident and more curious, and my interests started broadening beyond just video-games.
With these factors, that year I started approaching the “popular kids” in school. We talked
and I was able to somewhat get along with them and one day I even had the audacity to tell
my childhood bestfriend that “I need new friends”. For weeks, I have talked and been around
these popular kids, pretending like I am one of them. I was trying to talk like them, develop
their attitude, to be happy I thought. Soon after, without any problems or arguments
sparking, just with pure observation, I have realized that I do not belong with such groups at
all, that happiness does not lie in a specific social group or way of life or public image. I have
realized that those who are very carried away with how they appear to people and are
perceived by society sink in that illusion of happiness and fullfilment that they forget to value
the real things in life, as well as the people that actually matter and care for them around
them and what happiness is to THEM, but rather what it is based on their society’s standards.
After that, I went to my bestfriend (that I earlier informed of my desire to find new friends)
and apologized to him, to be surprised and even more touched by how he welcomed me
with the phrase “of course man, we are brothers for life”, without holding any grudges or
speaking of what I did at all, going back to our normal friendship.

3. In the movie, write at least three different scenes which depicts the power of
(mis)communication.

 One scene can be seen at the beginning of the movie, when Patch is first assesed by the
doctor, the doctor seems to be distracted with his tea/coffe and seems to provide very
little attention to Patch, this resulted in Patch forming a clear image/assumption of the
doctor as being careless and unfit to do his job and stopped taking him seriosuly
afterwards.
 Another scene would be shortly after the first one, when Arthur asks Patch to look
beyond the problem (the four fingers). In this scene, Arthur explained in his own way
how focusing on the problemrather than the solution while communicating can lead into
miscommunication (the person seeing 4 fingers when Arthur sees 8 from his
perspective). Through his interesting methodology, Arthur taught Patch to focus on the
solution instead of the problem to communicate better, enabling Patch to help Rudy by
shifting his focus from Rudy imagining unexisting squirrels and creatures, to the solution
which is to get rid of these creatures with Rudy.
 The third scene can be seen towards the end of the movie. As patch gathers his
belongings from the hospital’s locker after his unfortunate loss, Mitch approaches him
 and asks him not to leave. Mitch explains that it is because due to his character, even his
knowledge did not allow him to make his patient eat for 3 weeks and only Patch, with his
communication skills can “cure” and take care of such cases.

4. Find one real case from the literature, magazine or journal where the illness is
cured because of the positiviness or good communication style.

Award winning angel investor Dan Martell, shared how he lost his parents at a really young
age, was introduced to drugs at 13, and was jailed at 15 for the first time after getting
arrested speeding in a stolen car, under the influence of drugs, with a handgun next to him.
He explained that at that moment, just before getting arrested, he was trying to pull the gun
out to have the police officers shoot at him to end his life, “because he couldn’t do it
himself”. After the arrest, he explains that one day a cop, called Brian, opened his cell, after
three months in jail, asked him to come with him, walked him towards the guards room and
sat him in the corner. Martell then recalls that Brian asked him “What are you doing here?”,
Martell responded: “I don’t know”. Afterwards, Brian added: “you don’t belong here, I see
the way you do your homework, I see how you’re trying to stay out of trouble, and I don’t
know, Dan, if you’ve never had anybody tell you this, that I believe in you.” Dan then explains
how, at the time, at 16 years old, it was his first time an adult has ever looked him in the eye
and said that they believed in him. He then explained how the police officer kept talking
about the potential Dan has, along with advises and Dan said that from that moment, his life
changed; Dan said that the reason he is still alive today is because of Brian.

5. Write the scene that you liked more and explain why.

My favorite scene has to be the one at court. It was beautiful to see how Patch Adams was
explaining his passion to become a doctor while simultaneously defending his ways and how
he does not mind standing out and being different. This scene showed a lot of courage,
determination, persistence, clarity of vision and motivation. I believe that the way Patch
explained that whether he graduates or not, he will still persue what he believes is right and
was proven to be right by the young patients that attended at the end, regardless of the
chains the system tries to put him in, teaches us how not to try to fit in certain groups against
our beliefs or morals, to not be embarrassed to stand out with what makes us special, to not
give up on ur dreams no matter the method taken, and most importantly, that happiness and
satisfaction is always found in helping others and seeing the mar that happiness left on them.