12 Slays of Xmas: "The Children"

Synopsis

The Children is a 2008 British horror-thriller that depicts Casey, a teenage girl who is traveling with her family to spend the holidays at a secluded family home. Holiday cheer is replaced by terror when the children begin to turn on their parents. The film has an approval rating of 75 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.0 out of 10 on IMDb.

How it relates to the field of psychiatry

Any case study, be it clinical or fictional, depicting acute personality change must be interpreted as induced by a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) or an underlying medical condition until proven otherwise. While many films have built a subversive narrative around the role that substances play in the development of maladaptive character traits, The Children is a film that focuses on the relatively rare incidence of behavioral change due to a medical condition.

While an environmental toxin (or maybe adverse side effect of a prescribed medication?) cannot be definitively ruled out, there is evidence to suggest that the mass behavioral change may be due to an underlying infection when strange bacteria are identified in the children’s vomit.

There are many infective processes that can affect the central nervous system (CNS). CNS infections may be caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi (e.g., ergot), or prions. Interestingly, one interpretation of Children of the Corn (1984), from which our selected film takes its title, is a mass personality change due to infected corn, similar to the theories of ergotism explaining the Salem Witch Trials.

With respect to the depicted film, one such offending agent to consider is Bartonella henselae, a bacterium that causes cat scratch fever (cue Ted Nugent here), better known in clinical circles as Cat Scratch Disease (CSD). As the name implies, the bacterial infection may be transmitted from cats to humans via scratches, bite wounds, or the bites of infected cat fleas. CSD may be the focus of the film’s plot given: a) the aforementioned bacterial vomitus and b) the role of Jinx the cat (while about 40 percent of cats are infected with B. henselae, most show no signs of disease, hence the name “Jinx”).

Those with compromised immune systems (such as the children) may suffer more severe sequelae, including infections of the eyes and brain. The latter may result in an acute personality change, as depicted, albeit dramatically, in The Children.