How do you write a character with a mental illness?

[Leonology]

In my stories I have a lot of characters who have mental disorders. I've been researching for months on these illnesses and I think I have a decent amount of knowledge to understand how they function. Although, recently I saw a post online stating that people should stop romanticizing mental illnesses in the media.

How do I know if I'm romanticizing a mental illness? And how do you properly write a character with a mental illness?

Thanks for any feedback, all in greatly appreciated!

[LindseyLeeMiller]

I think that idea of "stop romanticising mental illness in the media" while with good intentions could have unintended consequences. There are people genuinely ignorant towards mental illnesses that crave forms of media that will allow them to see different perspectives. That kind of idea skirts a very fine line -- don't romanticize racial tensions, don't romantiscize discrimination, don't romantisized disease or sickness, don't romantisize domestic abuse. And the list can go ON and ON and ON encompassing almost any negative aspect of humant interaction or human life. Stories and media are how people LEARN.

My personal belief is that artists and writers who create stories around mental illnesses that they do have, don't have, or maybe know someone, or maybe research all add to the larger conversation of normalizing mental illness. Everyone has completely different experiences with their own mental illnesses and with the mental illnesses of others -- or if they are curious enough to learn about them, makes all opinions and representations valid. Now that being said at the end of the day I believe the audience who reads it, evaluates it and takes something away from it - at the end of the day has their right to criticize it which further adds to the discourse of mental illness not only in media but also in real life. Criticism of these stories and different entertainment media allow us to fine tune and learn from our mistakes, our ignorance, and eventually we breed more understanding between people.

In regards to your last question, you really won't know unless you ask. Put it out there, ask your friends and family their opinions, ask people on this forum even. Try to get different perspectives and see if your on a leveled path for where your trying to go with your story ^^ I think thats really all I got haha.

[punkarsenic]

How do I know if I'm romanticizing a mental illness?

if youre cartooning it a bit - polishing and exaggerating the experience to seem more exciting, or dramatic, or. yknow. romantic. consider whether someone would read your story and be like 'oh yeah, i fancy having x, sounds like a lark.' thats where the harm starts, because it leads to trivialising the disorder and can make recovery difficult for people who have it.

i think a big thing is to portray it neutral light; not amazing, but not a fate worse than death. like, theres nothing exciting and cool about being schizophrenic or depressed, however people who are mentally ill can be exciting and cool people, and their situation isnt hopeless - the hopeless portrayal isnt romanticisation really, but it can be more harmful to tell depressed people that everythings fucked than to tell them their depression makes them unique or exciting or whatever.

in general, id say research is a major thing, so youre good there. but dont just research the disorder itself, but people with it - read varied accounts of people who have the disorder, maybe even ask some people with the disorder to be sensitivity readers, if youre really unsure. peoples experience of mental illness can be extremely varied, and understanding the variation of the experience and the people can help make your character more than a walking diagnosis guideline.

[kyupol]

Do lots of research on each respective mental illness you're trying to portray. Best bet is with interviews of people who actually do have the mental disorder. Either ask them directly or you might find a few of them on YouTube.

[BlackMantaStudios]

As the other posters have already said, research is always key. Read lots, listen to people, make sure your treatment of the subject matter is enlightening, but not too patronizing, nor dwells too much on the topic that it becomes heavy-handed and clumsy.

What I'd add, probably, is that one should try not to define the character by their disorder. The line sometimes blurs between the person's true self and the mental illness, but the line nonetheless exists. Make sure that what you're writing is a person, with an identity, with his/her due share of flaws and triumphs that is not dictated by what they're diagnosed with. As much as possible, avoid pigeonholing them into neat character descriptors, and instead develop them as if they were real people with real hopes and dreams, because of and despite their conditions.

Not everyone can pull it off well, and not for lack of trying. I've seen series here on Tap where people slap on disorders on their characters just to label them "different" from the rest, without fleshing out any other facet of their characters beyond that, which is just offensive to people with actual disorders. Mental illness is NOT a fashion accessory.

This topic is especially relevant to me given that I'm writing for Missing Stars, a visual novel where you romance girls with mental illnesses. From the premise alone, it's clear we're dancing on a minefield, but we have a team of medical consultants to make sure our portrayals are accurate and realistic, and our whole team is working hard to make it an honest and heartfelt story.

[saerel]

What I'd add, probably, is that one should try not to define the character by their disorder.

I feel that this is really, really important.

[Rhombik]

If you can, maybe show a rough draft of your comics to somebody more in know and see what they say. It's always good to have a sounding board.

Also, write them normal. This might sound odd when you're discussing mental disorders but it's true. Too often, comics present people with mental disorders as teenage girls with wacky hair, loners with long fringes or middle-aged men with an unhealthy obsession with their mothers. Normal people have mental disorders. People like new mothers, old people living alone, young children, freshers, drug addicts...

The best thing I ever read about mental disorders was "Stuart: A Life Backwards". Read it: It's the biography of a homeless, drug addict.

[joannekwan]

Research is always good so I'm glad you've done so!
So the next part on romanticizing, my thoughts are don't make these characters perfect. Don't let their mental illnesses win out for them and make it seem like they're super special for it in a positive light. Um, for example, there are lots of media on autistic kids, but they're always portrayed as savants and little geniuses. Sure sometimes they show the social ineptness of some of them, but it's shown as a "they're a genius lone wolf, no one understands them" kind of light.

It's like how I find some issue with how people with albinism are portrayed a lot in the media. I always see them as romanticized pure angels with flowing hair and pink eyes, or in anime they're always super special. In reality they're just people like everyone else with faults of their own.

[ahhvecadoes]

What mental illnesses are you trying to portray? There are plenty of people, myself included who live with mental illness and would be glad to give their insight on how to portray specific ones.

I agree with @BlackMantaStudios, the best thing to do when writing a mentally ill character is to not make that their defining characteristic. That's what a lot of people who suffer from any mental illness fear: being defined by it and having that change people's perception of them from the get-go. Most people do not flaunt their diagnosis because of the stigma that mental illness brings. Keeping that in mind will help you a lot!

[Aspie_Gamer]

Life of an Aspie creator here. @BlackMantaStudios and @joannekwan have both raised good points I was going to make about not letting the mental illness be the sole thing about their character so instead of repeating what was already said, I'll instead expand on it using my main character Susan Graham, the girl who's condition is in the title of my comic.

So far, I'd say that I've portrayed Susan Graham fairly neutrally as an autistic character making sure to give time to show off her quirks and social oddities that come with being on the spectrum (saying whatever's on her mind even if its something she probably shouldn't say in mixed company, displaying strong knowledge on her interests like Super Smash Bros or discussing the tropes of harem anime in a situation where she's in her element, and casually taking her clothes off without regards to how her roommate Mizuki might feel about it though the latter turns out to be fine with it.) while also giving her humanizing moments such as her relationship with those who "get" her like Hiroshi or showing a genuine caring side to those in visible pain like Mizuki even if she flubs it up due to her brain not registering the signs that the former wants to be left alone because of what happened to her in the previous chapter.

I've also made sure that her Asperger's wasn't romanticized by having her normal peers react the way you'd expect them to in a mixed setting like high school often being either confused, creeped out, or even laughing at how Susan acts. (and on a side note, Japan isn't as knowledgeable on autism as America is further adding to the problem my main character has in the story.)

What I'm saying is take a nuanced and balanced approach to writing people with mental disorders. Don't make them a stereotype as it hurts public perception of how these groups are viewed by society. Non LoaA example, the actor who played the blue power ranger in this year's Power Rangers reboot both listened to and studied the idiosyncrasies of autistic people to better portray that film's take on said power ranger and in the film itself, the character of Billy Cranston feels like he belongs with the other four teenagers as opposed to being a caricature that's just there because "progressivism".

@ahhvecadoes Your comment about the stigma people with mental illness go through reminds of a situation that happened in the middle of Chapter 2 of my comic where Hiroshi apologized for something out of left field Susan said to Takeshi and Eiji saying that she had Asperger's which Eiji, the Eric Cartman of LoaA, treated as a big joke and later used the knowledge to further agitate her in Chapter 3 when he stirred the pot further by insinuating that she uses her condition as a "get out of jail free card."

[shazzbaa]

Although, recently I saw a post online stating that people should stop romanticizing mental illnesses in the media.

How do I know if I'm romanticizing a mental illness? And how do you properly write a character with a mental illness?

The thing about "romanticising mental illness" comes from stories that make mental illnesses seem, like, beautifully tragic, or quirky and fun -- something that sounds kind of nice and special to have, something that makes people more artistic or smarter or more interesting. So, for example, the character Monk has OCD, but it's treated like a funny quirk that makes him super observant and a lil weird, instead of, y'know, a very unpleasant anxiety disorder that's no fun at all to actually experience.

Not romanticising is like... being honest about it? Like don't play it up as a beautiful tragedy or play it down as a funny personal oddity. Just knowing all the symptoms and how the illness actually works is great!! but you also gotta look for thoughts from folks who like.... have the illness in question, and how it affects their lives, and how they feel about it.
Because something I've run into is that different illnesses are going to have different problems in how they tend to be portrayed. Schizophrenia has a problem of always being portrayed as tragic, so a lot of folks with psychotic disorders want desperately to see characters with their illnesses who are just dealing with all the obstacles it brings and functioning and living fulfilling lives anyway, rather than being some beautiful genius tragedy. OCD, on the other hand, gets treated as a silly quirk, so some folks with OCD are sick of seeing the actual problems of that disorder constantly played down just to give a character a funny extra peculiarity.

So I feel like a big part of "not romanticising" is kinda, paying attention to folks who have the illness in question when they talk about their experiences.

[indagold]

I feel everyone brought up good points but one point I'd like to leave is that I feel people get very finnicky with writing mentally ill characters because they are few and far between, especially the less mainstream disorders that don't show up much in media. People want the perfect ideal of what mental illness should be. For example I've seen articles talking about bipolar, which I have, getting upset that the main character of a tv show has an obsession with a blue pen (even though obsession a symptom that happens in real life) and saw it as stereotyping/romanticizing.

You can never appease everyone frankly, all you need is a well rounded, believable character. Maybe what they go through is tragic or not, happy or sad, as long as it is true to life, I feel that's the best way to handle it in the end.

[Leonology]

The main mental illnesses I'm researching are Anti-Social Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I feel like those two mental illness are extremely romanticized in the media and it's kind of upsetting. I'm not sure how to write them without shoving their disorder in people's faces because people with these mental disorders (specifically NPD) sometimes don't try to hide it.

Also, thanks for the advice!!

[Leonology]

Oh, this explains a lot! Sometimes when I see characters have mental disorders the writers tend to only take the symptoms that make them seem better. When I read stories that have a character with depression, sometimes they only take the suicide part to and leave out all the rest. I really like what you said about portraying the illness honestly, it's important to include the reality that comes with it.

[Leonology]

Thanks for your response! Yeah, sometimes it's easy to forget that not everyone with a mental illness has an extremely tragic life. There are a lot of cases where it's genetic or it just happens out of nowhere. As long as the character is actually humanized it should ultimately be fine.

[andrewgenaille]

I agree with what everybody else brought up above.

The character in my comic strip suffers from mental issues, so does his girlfriend; aside from them meeting in a shrinks office it doesn't really come up too often (aside from some comics I made as part of Mental Health Week.)

Sometimes when he has certain interactions with people and spiders but it's not a major character trait even though the stories about how he interacts with the world around him. He's OCD and Agoraphobic.

https://tapas.io/episode/68314

[phen]

There's a lot of awesome input here regarding what to avoid and it's largely (and importantly) "don't take it lightly". Research/experience should go into everything a writer intends to bring to their audience, regardless as to if it's a character's mental illness or a character's favourite pastime. Research should be knee-jerk, of course.

Ultimately, though, before even going into the first draft, as the writer goes into research perhaps, they have to ask themselves: Why? Why write a character with a mental illness? What's the purpose of portrayal? Will this illness be a pilot for something in specific? Does it even have to be a mental illness to begin with? Can it be something else that drives character growth, narrative, moral dilemma, etc., etc.? Shoehorning a mental illness because of shock value or "ooh, shocking, quirky angles!" can lead to a tremendous failing (which has been noted here by a few others).

[heterodont]

Maybe in this case, try writing them as if they were "normal" like @GombikComics suggested? Mental illnesses express themselves incredibly different in people, so while they may hit the requirements for a diagnosis - the severity and expression of said symptoms can vary wildly. It'd even help with not making their character All About having that disorder!

Both things you listed are personality disorders so you can also always show it in interactions as well, or even just monologue stuff as well.

[NickRowler]

Well, the first thing I would say is to do research.

And for the love of god, please do not make a schizophrenic who talks to imaginary demons and wants to murder everyone. That how Hollywood tends to portray schizophrenia which is not realistic to how most people with schizophrenia really are. Schizophrenia is a complicated disorder and I would recommend avoiding it all together.

Bipolar is also one what people don't quite understand. It's not just mood swings, it is a cycle. Similarly, not everyone with depression is crying 24/7 or are emo/goth. A lot of people will put on a happy persona around other people but when they are alone, they might be in a more depressed state.

The main mental illnesses I'm researching are Anti-Social Personality Disorder

I know someone who has this. They are not super violent (they were not murdering people) and they are not a "crime lord". However they are prone to being impulsive, had a bad history with drugs and alcohol, and was in and out of jail a lot for stealing. I think the behaviors range from person to person but I doubt all of them are as extreme as say someone like the Joker or any other similar character.

It's always good to ask question about if something works or not. And do not solely rely on how Hollywood does it.