1Daily Dose of Sunshine - Finding Hope and Humanity in World of Psychiatry
Daily Dose of Sunshine, Netflix's newest offering, is an adaptation of the webtoon "Jeongsinbyeongdongedo Achimi Wayo" (정신병동에도 아침이 와요) by Iraha. Drawing inspiration from real life experiences, the show explores the world of psychiatric care.
The story unfolds through the perspective of Jung Da Eun, a character with whom we can easily empathize. As she makes the transition into the psychiatric unit, we witness her initial challenges and her path towards finding her footing within the ward.
This series addresses the pressing issue of mental health especially in South Korea, a country struggling with increasing mental health challenges. Daily Dose of Sunshine opens the door to essential conversations in a society where mental health often carries a heavy stigma.
What stands out is the careful portrayal of mental illness. The show doesnt limit itself to one perspective but delves into the inner worlds of patients. It beautifully captures the diverse experiences, from paranoia to mania induced dance routines and the transition of OCD and hyper fixations. The audience can truly empathize with the patients struggles.
Da Eun is portrayed as a kind hearted character, but the show doesnt shy away from highlighting the potential pitfalls of excessive kindness, reminding us that healthcare professionals are human too. It explores the challenges they face, including the hierarchy within the healthcare system.
Daily Dose of Sunshine doesnt just reduce patients to symptoms, it humanizes them. Through Da Eun, the entire team rediscovers the importance of maintaining a personal connection with patients, rather than just focusing on their medical records.
Through the character Go Yoon, the series delivers humor at the perfect moments when you need it most & Yeon Woo Jin's performance is truly commendable
Daily Dose of Sunshine offers a unique exploration of psychiatry and its patients for both viewers and Jung Da Eun. Park Bo Young's sincere portrayal of Jung Da Eun makes the journey relatable. With its balanced tone and honest approach to mental illness, Daily Dose of Sunshine encourages hope and understanding, reminding us that we are not so different from the patients we see.
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a good try with some major flaws
I quite liked this drama, and had it stayed on course like it started with the first 2 episodes, my rating would have been much higher.I liked the focus on mental health issues, especially as it is such an important topic in South Korea for known reasons.
They did well in the start, and I enjoyed the visual creations of different disorders, to make it tangible for people who don't know much about it.
Sadly it also had several flaws in the later episodes. First I have to admit that I was more interested in the side lovestory than the that of the main characters - I really like Chang Ryul, he was brilliant in 'my name' and it such a versatile actor.
The main flaws for me were different ones though:
the drama wanted to show different mental health issues with example stories. One of the first stories was a 43-year-old woman who was so opressed by her highly intrusive and invasive mother that she totally lost it and was in the closed ward of the psychiatry now. Very realistic example so far. But the drama wanted to show solutions veeery simplified. We hear that the woman hates grapes, a food her mother constantly brings her and says she'd always loved gapes. This is the peg for the problematic situation, the woman screams at her mother that she always hated grapes and because of that overboarding behaviour of the mother she 'wasn't even able to order a cup of coffee somewhere herself at the age of 43'.
The drama solves this over 40-year old problem situation with deeply ingrained toxic behaviours with just telling the mother once, so she brings other fruits for her next visit, and soon later mother and daughter happily leave the hospital, like best friends.
Erm, nope, this is not how things are in reality. People don't change like that and longlastig toxic relationship patterns don't change from one day to the other, just because someone says 'bring different fruits.'
The show oversimplified complicated issues that need lots of work (and the willingness of all people involved - that is where most things fail before they even started) and time to get any change, and often even with lots of effort this change never comes. That's reality, the drama wanted to show good endings of most cases, but that's just far from reality obviously.
Same with the ML and his panic attacks. Those are severe too and he had them for many years. Again, it just takes one or two people talking to him with some few friendly words, and yippie, he says 'oh yes, right, I have to address this, I go to the doc, get this treated with meds and my life will be fine.' Again, naaah, if you have severe panic disorder for sucha a long time, you do not just listen to a few friendly words from a friend and then go and solve this. If you have severe anxiety, you are also afraid of things like medication, of doctors who will 'judge' you, of others hearing from your problem etc. It just doesn't work that easy in reality sadly.
Another unrealistic thing was that our main FL, who works as a psychiatric nurse, suddenly has severe depression herself.
Well, that can of course happen, as depression can hit pretty much everyone.
Her depression is major though, so major that she walks in front of a truck to die. She ends up in the closed ward herself and is deep down the depression spiral for a while.
She finally gets out of it and...the older main nurse then begs her to come back and work again in the psychriatic ward. That's of course nice but at least in my country and others I lived in, it would be impossible. If you have a history of attempted suicide and major mental health issues yourself, there would be no way then that you could work again in such position - for your own safety and those of your patients.
Back to the lovestory of the side characters. It was a nice story, wealthy man falls in love with a very poor nurse. The drama left out major issues in Korea, like, what would his wealthy parents say to this choice? We do not get any information about his family, only some few things he says which imply the 'golden spoon' (so does his super spacious and very expensive appartment)
So, after fighting to gain her trust for quite a while, she finally is willing to date him, awkwardly though, but still. He even supports her abandoning her supertoxic 'person who accidentally gave birth to her' (I don't want to call such people mothers) - which is a good idea. But then, things speed up in a totally different direction, obviously trying to make the young woman, now free of her money problems and the toxic mother, a happy, independent person. She quits her nurse job all of a sudden, and wants to become a dancer on a cruise ship and leave the nice guy, who, of course, is also super willing to let her go away for a full year? I didn't find that credible at all. It often happens that K-dramas want to show this kind of 'woman does what she wants'-thing- but rarely have I seen cases where this went believable and smooth instead of doggerel and unrealistic like here.
All in all, it was a good start, it's good K-dramas try to openly focus on mental health issues, but they just don't get it right in the details yet.
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Daily dose of Sunshine for Jung Da Eun
“The Daily Dose of Sunshine series touches on important topics related to mental health and how we should deal with those who have depression. But the plot was completely unrealistic. I suspect that the high ratings may have been influenced by the fame of the actors rather than the content of the plot.The main character, although she is a nurse, has no idea about the job and any communication with the patients worsens their condition. One patient even tragically committed suicide after talking to her. After that, every other episode was about her depression without any apologies to the grieving family or attendance at the funeral.
Her decision to return to the hospital was surprising and why she was so sure she was good at her job I never understood.
Despite having a supportive colleague and a caring mother, the female lead is depressed and seems somewhat selfish, especially considering that others in the story have faced deep loss and had tragic stories.
The plot seems unfair, as everyone except the female lead is portrayed as hopelessly unhappy, and she, despite having everything, falls into depression. At the end of the series, the team leader defending her right to work, despite being mentally weak and different from the mentally ill, seemed selfish. No patient deserves this life and the truth is that most patients will never be able to go back to their previous lifestyle or work, they will never have the same life as her. The whole story was very unfair .
In fact, you will give this series different thoughts when you put yourself not in the shoes of the female lead, but in the shoes of someone else.
Overall, the plot and character development left me unsatisfied, especially the way the main character's actions and consequences were shown.
But of course a lot of people are more interested in the romance and who the female lead will be end and maybe that was the point of the series and I just expected a lot more and was disappointed. But of course I can't say anything bad about the acting.
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What a waste of time and talent
Both Park Bo Young and Lee Jung Eun need new management if this is all that can be found for them. The plot is a complete mess, lurching from light comedy, to romance, to really dark and clichéd portrayals of various types of mental illness (nearly all rooted in self harm), topped off with the temerity to get preachy about it. Nevertheless, I stuck with it to the bitter end hoping they could salvage something, but no. The show really ends with episode 11, but they tacked on another episode with a bunch of random trite nonsense. While this might not be the absolute worst drama I've ever seen, it was certainly close. Again, what a waste of my time and the immense talent of the very good actors that got sucked into participating in this one. Skip!Was this review helpful to you?
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Best example of Worst Drama about Mental Health
I waited patiently and reserved my final judgements towards the show, till the end just hoping that they will do something or deliver a different message towards the end.Sadly, what a great disappointment this show turns out to be.
If this is how they (Netflix, production companies, director and writers) intend to do a story or talks about mental health then this show would be a good example of worst demonstration of mental health.
There are a lot of elements I can live with but there are a few fundamentals I just can't.
a) Colour used - from the interior of a psychiatric ward to the colours of the nurses uniform.
*I think "It's Okay to Not Be Okay (2020)" demonstrated or educated some of us about the importance of colours in the topic of mental health. In most times, Red (red related colour) suggests ignites, power, energy, aggression, fire - probably the last colour you want to use in the psychiatric ward? (I read in Netflix IG, Director's got this inspiration after visiting OB/GYN clinic, I was speechless reading that).
b) Medicine = answer to mental health
I can't help but noticed from the start, all Doctors in the show kept mentioning medicine, just take your medicine and you'll be fine! Let's have a few words with your family and ta-da! you're all fine and well again! Or let us transfer you to another hospital! Are they serious? The last straw for me was ep8 when the female lead finally realises her depression. From there, doctors and people around her just kept asking her to take medicine, keep to a regular routine, write complimentary diary, and poof! you're be fine and okay again!
Don't get me wrong, the narrative in ep9 was great, perspective from a nurse turn to a patient, I was looking forward how they going to go from there, it was a really good angle (rejection from your family, forcefully admit you to a psychiatric ward, how no one really 'listening' to you when you're at your most vulnerable time, everyone tries to tell you 'what's best', because they are the 'healthy people'? )
but it seems like..nah, there's nothing to write about it from there so let's move on to..Love!
Utterly speechless. Till the end no one around her helped her to really overcome her depression or helped her get a closure from the incident. Hence I do agree, her depression will relapse for sure.
Then that's how they end the show - Just remember to take your medicine and fall in love! and that's your Happily ever after!
Honestly if they want to do another rom-com, just do it and have mental health as a side/support plot.
It's disgusting how they handle this and very disrespectful, very.
I am now rewatching It's Okay to Not Be Okay (2020)
to see if I'm really biased or I should take admit myself to a hospital and start taking pills too.
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Drama is so good
Oh my goodness, this drama is so good! 🥺😭🤍Daily dose of sunshine is my new favorite drama! Even though Daeun's first day is already stressful it was a heartwarming drama. I found myself getting quite attached to the characters from the psychiatric ward because they had their own personalities nurses, physicians, guardians, and patients.
I enjoyed how each episode's narration and the patient's perspective on mental illness were portrayed. It was also entertaining to watch the love line between Go Yoon-da-eun and Yoo Chan-da-eun Yeo Hwan-deul-le!
One of the best of the recent Netflix originals!!! ♥️
Mental illness is an unpredictable illness that can strike anyone, anywhere, at any. I'm thinking a lot about this line.
**
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Decent portrayal of mental health with l terrible messaging
Ughh. This drama really bugged me. As someone with some background knowledge and care giving in mental health, I just need to share a few thoughts on this one. Especially because the drama presented things in an almost textbook way. Well it came off as super old textbooks written years ago when we have much more research to update our knowledge of these things today.Drama gave a decent portrayal of people with various mental health conditions. I especially appreciate that it took their perspective and was sympathetic.
What I couldn’t stand was that in order to manipulate the audience and tell emotional stories, they went completely off track in explaining root causation for mental health issues. They would rather put blame on bad parenting or societal pressures because it suited the story, than address the scientifically proven genetic predispositions people have to many of these mental health diagnoses. I am not saying environmental factors don’t play a role in triggering, but it was pretty obvious they wanted to skirt around the biological and genetic causes. To me, it was too much of a missed opportunity and came across as Korea once again not wanting to fully acknowledge mental health. Almost like it is a personal weakness and flaw to have such genetic predispositions. So it feels more comfortable to explain it in another way. I’m sorry but bad parenting does not cause bipolar disorder. It is a physical, chemical brain condition.
Once again, Korea still has a ways to go in facing without shame mental health.
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Underwhelmed
I love Park Bo Young and this drama was pretty high-rated on Mydramalist, but ended up being not my thing. I finished it but I wish I didn’t invest my time in it at all. It was about mental health, all 12 episodes of it, but it went absolutely nowhere with everything else.Mental health is a very important topic. We all experience depression and anxiety at some point, we have family members that have PTSD or intellectual disability. It’s very important for the society to be educated about this but reality is that people could not be more indifferent to those strangers with mental health issues. I know firsthand about this, having an autistic family member. I learned a lot from this drama when doctors were explaining conditions of their patients’ health in detail. But all subplots were unrealistic and shallow, and went nowhere. Also main female character was very sympathetic and caring but mentally weak and did not make good decisions and it affected other people. You need special training to be psychiatric nurse. The way you act, the words that you say…
10 for acting, 4 for the plot.
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Mental disorders trigger warnings
One of the most realistic ones I've seen on the painful topic of dealing with mental health disorders from both sufferers and caregivers perspective. Up until around the halfway mark, I had thought the poster image for this drama is quite deceiving. This isn't a happy, feel good drama and comes with a lot of trauma and mental affliction trigger warnings of all kind including unaliving oneself. It also explores the impact all of these have on their loved ones which I'm sure will hit close to home for a lot of the viewers.However as the story progresses I began to see it's not all dark and gloom and it does a great job portraying both sides in their daily efforts to get better, be happy humans or sometimes just get through the day. As is often the case in real life, some of their stories are successful, some are not but by the end of the show I no longer felt tricked by the poster image.
The deliberate light romance doesn't take away from the essence of the issues they're trying to bring across, focusing instead on deeper, more heartfelt emotions. It does start to drag a little in the second half but I still found it absolutely worth watching and empathized with all the characters right till the end.
Some might find this boring, just understand this is a slice of life type drama so if this isn't your thing you can just skip it. But if you or someone close to you has worked in this field, then you know that a lot of what you see in this drama does actually happen and the toll it takes can be incredibly hard to overcome.
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One of the best drama of 2023 HIGHLY RECOMMEND
I just finished watching this drama and I would give it a 9.5/10. They showed a story which is unique compared to other Kdramas. They gave awareness of the situations that a person with mental health goes through. All the Characters were portrayed perfectly by the actors and the acting was just chefs kiss. This drama made cry so much the last few episodes. The Friendship in this drama is something else and I’m glad that the director didn’t make the love triangle complicated. Usually people say that male leads are the one that shows green flags but in this drama SML he was one a greenest flags no offence. And the cast was perfect🤩 hands off to that, they made the perfect choice by casting PBY as the FL(as always the queen SLAYYED!!)
The only problem with this drama is that the romance was mainly focused on the second couple rather than the main, they could have showed us more of the main couple. And idk if it’s only me but I didn’t feel that much of a chemistry between either of the couples especially the main couples maybe it’s because of the less scenes between them (but the FL and SML showed more tbh😂and I think I fell in love with Jang Do Yoon🫶). Either way this drama took spot on my TOP 5 drama of 2023. 😂🤌
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ‼️‼️
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Watch it for the acting
I enjoyed the last couple of episodes more than the rest, though they still somewhat left me dissatisfied.What I liked:
Acting was excellent. I love Park Bo Young. The only time I don't like her acting is when she cries. It is loud and it's overdone, so it makes me want to laugh. She did better in this drama. She still had a couple of over-the-top moments, but her moments of quiet crying were very touching. Plus, she had the perfect, calming voice for her character's job.
Lee Jeong Eun as Nurse Manager Song. I love this actress. She's got that tough exterior and that inner softness/caring. Plus, she has a great voice.
Noh Jae Won as mental patient Kim Seo Wan. This was a tragically beautiful character, and he did an amazing job. As he struggled between fantasy and reality, there was a wonderful sweetness (or maybe innocence) about him. His relationship with PBY's nurse Da Eun was terrific to watch.
Relationship between Da Eun and longtime friend Yu Chan. I'll admit, in my heart I thought they would be a better match for each other. So supportive of each other, with the fighting that often comes with people that have known one another forever.
-special effects were good. Physical displays of what was going on in the person's mind.
Things that let me down:
Being in the medical profession, I have a difficult time suspending disbelief, especially since this was a medical drama. Where do I begin?
-she transfers to the psych unit because her previous boss told her to? (Unbeknownst to her, her boss was trying to get rid of her.) It takes a special person to work in a psychiatric unit, and she knew NOTHING about psychiatric disorders, not even bipolar disorder, which is something that everyone has at least heard of.
-she doesn't use gloves when giving injections or drawing blood.
-it's a locked psych unit, but the patient rooms each have a refrigerator in them, and the patients are allowed to have pretty much whatever they want in their room. There were multiple people in a room, if a person wanted to hurt themselves or someone else, they have access to pretty much anything.
-You leave with a psych patient to take her to the bank to open a savings account?
-it's a locked unit, but a patient can get to the roof without anyone knowing? Add to that, there are cameras all over the place and no one saw anything.
-I realize it was a short series, but many of the psychiatric disorders were glossed over and oversimplified. The grown woman that has a contentious relationship with her mom, and all it takes for the woman to be healed is for the mom to bring her the correct kind of fruit. She's miraculously cured and gets discharged. Pep talks seemed to "cure" some of the characters.
-PBY character depression. Came as a result of a tragedy, but was definitely more than situational depression, especially since she tried to kill herself. She had been working on the psych ward for some period of time, her case was so severe, and the voice overs showed that she was aware, to a certain degree, that she wasn't behaving right. She didn't seek help.
-I'm sorry, she would not be able to go back to work on a psych unit after having the issues she had. The writers made it seem like she was "cured" as long as she took her medication. Being on a psych unit would be a constant trigger for her.
Then there were the relationships:
-I don't usually have SLS, but she should have ended up with her longtime friend. I was bothered by the fact that the doctor liked her because looking at her made him stop cracking his knuckles, but when they were apart, he went back to cracking his knuckles. She was a panacea for his behavior, that's a lot of pressure for anyone. Yeon Woo Jin as Go Yoon was good, and he's just so cute when he smiles, but I didn't feel their relationship at all.
-2nd couple. She had absolutely no self-esteem, and I could see why after we met the nightmare of a mother. It seemed to me he was always the one doing the work in the relationship. Very unbalanced. Don't even get me started on the fact that she decided to go away for a year. These writers will do anything to include time skips, people leaving, etc.
So, I'm glad I watched it, but was, overall, disappointed. At least I can cross it off my watch list.
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Social Commentary or Mental Health?
If you want a drama to accurately represent and inform viewers about mental illness, then this is not for you. If you want reasonable characters and complex dialogue, then this is not for you. If you want mature characters who are expected to act their age, then this is not for you. If you enjoy a watered-down and amateur screenplay about human interactions that also deals with mental issues, and tries to hide its flaws with overbearing moralizing, occasional comic relief, and a flurry of needless romance, then this is right up your alley!Although the shows has a stellar start with interesting safety facts and quirks about working in a psychiatric facility, that is about the extent of where the facts regarding mental illness are informative. At one instance, the show briefly mentions the scientific and physical (neurochemical/anatomical) issues about mental illnesses, but by the very next scene, it completely dispels or forgets the physical and tries to mainly attribute the cause to mostly or solely societal pressures and injustices. In other words, it is the overbearing mother, the despotic manager, or the predatory capitalistic society that is causing our mental health crisis. And the universal remedy is that people just need to take their meds and have others accept them; or, for those suffering from severe OCD, fall in love and be cured! This is a completely naive picture that a introductory course in psychiatry will quickly dispel. To make matters worse, the "prescriptions" aren't scientifically backed advice but are seemingly a mixture of the writer's dogmatisms, sociological assumptions, and attempts at psychoanalysis. The patients become the victims of the overused trope: "society is the problem." Therefore, society must change; not the patients. Once their external environment changes, the patients, too, magically begin to improve.
The drama reeks of victim mentality. It is constantly upbraided by passive aggressive characters, and the writer's constant virtue signaling, as if it's profound knowledge, becomes nauseating very quickly. What this drama portrays for the "mentally ill" are those who have had their worldviews, ambitions, goals, and desires destroyed by societal pressures. Then, it throws in various mental illnesses ad-hoc. These may describe various cases, as traumatic experiences can trigger underlying issues or make one more susceptible to developing mental illness, but the environment is rarely the cause. Someone down on his luck can experience bouts of depression without suffering from clinical depression. Someone may find difficulty trying to focus due to a stressful environment without suffering from ADHD. Someone may lapse into a fit of rage without suffering from anger management. Unique experiences can naturally cause you to react outside of your control especially if you are unfamiliar to them, but they do not force your physical make-up to change and leave you in an inelastic, neurochemically impaired state. Consequently, traumatic experiences do not describe all cases of mental illnesses, and especially for ones requiring long-term stays at a psychiatric ward.
The mentally ill isn't exclusive to members of society who have had difficult and restricted lives or those who have failed at their chances for glory. They exist for all types of people and can happen to anyone, anytime: with or without reason, poor or rich, successful or unsuccessful, sociable or reclusive, physically fit or unfit, etc. Like, seriously. What will the writer claim was the catalyst for John Nash's schizophrenia and psychosis? Too much success? For possessing too much mathematical prowess? Or, Robin William's depression? Too great of a comedian? For possessing too much fame and wit?
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