One year, winter just didn’t end. The year after, the sun set for the final time, and after that it was night forever. Then the hungry ghosts started appearing.

Corn.. for the corn god..? Maize for the maize throne?

No, a metaphor for unprocessed trauma. The ending where she accepts the Babadook, keeps it in the basement and feeds it, the line «you can’t get rid of the Babadook,» all of it presents as a metaphor for the process of working through trauma and grief. In the end, she accepts the darkness of her trauma as a part of herself.

Thats one interpretation. Another, perhaps more powerful one, is to view it as a metaphor.

Unprocessed grief and trauma are not the same as mental illness, and calling them the cause of mental illness is a gross oversimplification. They can be a cause, but rarely on their own.

It’s not about mental illness, it’s about unprocessed grief and trauma.