If I was a counselor, the movie I would highly recommend to a client, especially suffering from depression would be the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. I think this movie holds multiple important lessons. One lesson is that your life matters and impacts everybody’s life and events surrounding them. The movie shows just how much the world would be different without you in existence. I think this is a powerful message to people who feel hopelessly stuck and think that their life holds no value, importance or meaning. When the main character in this film sees what life looks like without him, he sees how much his life affected every person he came in contact with. Just one person gone from the globe changes the whole picture and series of events that occur. A step left could now occur instead of a step right. The whole timeline and chain of events would become altered.
This movie also illustrates how people can become if they do not achieve every single goal they have for themselves. People set high expectations for themselves and when they are not reached, it can cause great disappointment and depression in an individual.
Another valuable lesson that can be taken away from this film is that people need to realize what they already have instead of what they don’t. The main character was so fixated on what life he could have potentially had instead of the life he has currently. Like the main character, when people have financial issues, they are more likely to resort to suicide but his family and friends in the end pulled him out of his burden and made him realize what is truly important in life and that this burden was not worth him losing his life.
While my client watched this film, I would only hope these lessons would be recognized and that it would help them see that every life effects the world in a unique way and sometimes what you think is the most important thing is really secondary.
