The very first PTSD Disney character

[Lauren]

After watching both the original and Simba's Pride recently, I remember thinking about the course of Simba's life and how much he has changed from his childhood to adulthood. I started thinking about this topic and based on what's happened to him in the first two movies, I believe that Simba is probably the very first Disney character that suffers from PTSD (Posttraumatic stress disorder). Given it's definition:

[quote="Wikipedia"]Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop after a person is exposed to one or more traumatic events, such as sexual assault, warfare, serious injury, or threats of imminent death. The diagnosis may be given when a group of symptoms, such as disturbing recurring flashbacks, avoidance or numbing of memories of the event, and hyperarousal, continue for more than a month after the occurrence of a traumatic event.[/quote]

Ever since he was a cub, he went through very traumatizing events in his life. Scar was unhappy about Simba becoming the future king instead of him and wanted to steal his position as the next king after his brother. With Scar plotting to kill both Mufasa and Simba, it went very well since he tricked Simba into waiting in the gorge while practicing his roar, made the wildebeest run after him, found Mufasa and pretended to be concerned for Simba's life, betrayed Mufasa, murdered him, and exiled Simba away while sending the hyenas to kill him. Simba saw his own father die right there on the spot with his own eyes and was blamed for his death. He almost died out in the desert before Timon and Pumbaa saved him.

After Simba found Mufasa dead, Scar had a chilling conversation with him with statements like:

"What have you done?"

"No one ever means for these things to happen, but the king is dead...and if weren't for you, he'd still be alive...What would your mother think?"

"Run away, Simba...Run away and never return."

After Simba returned back to Pride Rock as an adult, he witnessed Scar's abusive behavior towards his mother and the confrontation with Scar began to affect him again since he was forced to admit his "crime" of being responsible for his father's death. With him being on the edge of the rock above flames, he was almost murdered by Scar in the same fashion that Mufasa was. Scar admited the actual truth of him murdering Mufasa in order to make Simba's death more emotionally painful.

In the second movie, Simba is protective over Kiara since he loves her so much and doesn't want anything bad happening to her. He has a difficult time trusting Kovu since he is the soul reminder of Scar.

When I saw the nightmare Simba has, this is what made me realize that he truly suffers from PTSD and it's much more prominent:

His nightmare is very dark, brutelike, and the scenery is exactly the same as his memory from the day of the incident. Mufasa is hanging onto the cliff and unlike the memory, Simba appears as his adult self trying to save him from falling into the stampede. Scar stops him from saving Mufasa and Simba watches him fall to his death with his eyes. Scar morphs into Kovu with the scar that will appear later in the film (a sign of foreshadow as well as the representation of Simba's trauma that started from his childhood) and kills Simba the same way that Scar killed Mufasa. He wakes up terrified.

In the final act, after Kiara stops Zira from attacking Simba, he's very scared and immediately goes after her to save her since she's falling into the cliff. That is also another reminder of his trauma since his father died by falling off a cliff as well as him almost dying the same way with the flames underneath him.

With all these events affecting his life from an early age, I think that him having this type of diagnosis makes him much more fascinating as a character as well as impressive for Disney. Before TLK, Disney never really had characters, especially main protagonists, suffer from any kind of trauma the same way Simba did throughout the original and SP. Even in 1.5, Simba woke up Timon and Pumbaa one time while living in the jungle with them due to him having a nightmare, which obviously implies that it was about Mufasa's death. With anyone who has dealt with a major crisis in their life or some type of disorder/diagnosis, they can probably relate with Simba on some level. He had to deal with very complex issues such as guilt, murder, family loss, depression, exile, abandoning his identity, and seeing his home become a wasteland. Scar pretty much scarred his life. In reality, Simba would've probably committed suicide due to to all the trauma that hurts him. Luckly, he never did that and continued to be a king and a father.

What do you think about Simba being the first Disney character to be diagnosed with something as serious as PTSD? How do you feel about it?

[Carl]

I think it's completely inevitable considering the story was based on Hamlet, in which the main character also had issues due to his father's death. And since Disney didn't expect TLK to get big, they were willing to take such risks. Then when it worked well in the first film, and they planned the sequel to be based on Romeo and Juliet, the only real way they could pull it off was to play into Simba's issues and make it more obviously PTSD. I have seen people make this note before, and as a kid I never got it, so I always hated about SP that Simba was, to quote Nala, "not the Simba I remembered." In my younger years I considered it the biggest flaw in any movie I liked.

Now that I'm older and understand that kind of thing, I don't consider it to be a flaw. Although Simba does still act brashly and do things he oughtn't, it makes sense in this light and I've come to understand and accept it. It is very interesting that the main protagonist has such an issue, since normally they are fairly normal.

He may very well be the first with PTSD specifically, however, I'm not sure if he's the first Disney character to be diagnosed with something as serious; I'd have to do some research and look into all of the older works Disney has done, especially considering how dark some of their films were.

[zerodix]

this post gave me goosebumps. I Always joke that my life is like "the lion king" and I actually have ptsd, not in a severe form, but the nightmares, anxiety and mood issues, yes. But, on the other hand, the process of life is that we reminisce our pasts and sometimes dream about it, or fear certain events. I doubt if Simba has ptsd, but with his background (that scene where Mufasa dies kinda traumatized all our little kiddy hearts) it wouldn't be a strange thing.