# Narratives or resources on mental illness



## Jenn (Oct 25, 2014)

Hi all! One of the main characters in a fantasy novel I'm working on suffers greatly from a mental illness...it takes place in a world too primitive for clinical psychology haha but I guess the closest diagnoses you could give the character is schizoaffective or maybe psychotic depressive (delusional with manic/depressive episodes).

I was hoping to find some kind of personal narratives or resources (maybe diary entries or something?) on what goes on "inside someone's head" when they suffer from paranoid delusions. It's easy enough to just make something up but I was just hoping to read some personal stories and descriptions about what it's like to have these delusions and go about your daily life, to give me a better idea on developing this character. Since they are pretty crucial to the story I want to be able to really build their character right while avoiding any stereotypes when it comes to mental illness.

Thanks!


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## shadowwalker (Oct 25, 2014)

I would also suggest contacting your local mental health groups (NAMI for one) and/or find forums for the mentally ill. On the latter, contact the admins, explain your purpose, and see how they want to handle your contact with their members. As long as you're honest and open with them, and privacy is assured, you'll probably get more anecdotes than you can handle.


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## aj47 (Oct 25, 2014)

_Girl Interrupted_ (the book, not the movie)


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## Jenn (Oct 26, 2014)

I have read Girl, Interrupted before - a great suggestion though as I don't think I've read it in about ten years, haha. I'll have to pick it up again. Asking around forums is also a great idea, thank you, just have to be very tactful about it.


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## Deafmute (Oct 27, 2014)

Griemoir pointed me over here. I work in psychiatry, and could give you a ton of stories running the gambit of mental disorders. Schizoaffective is definitely an intense disorder. A few key concepts with dealing with realistic hallucination and delusions would how they tend to manifest. Most TV and movies portray normal people walking around and suddenly seeing stuff that is totally out there. Its not really that simple. Hallucination, delusions all stem from internal thoughts. They are not random, they play off what you already think or feel. People who are religious tend to hallucinate religious things ie demons or angels or god. Hallucinations are almost always auditory visual hallucination are rare outside of drug use, but it may occur in periods of extreme stress. 

Another big thing is to understand that psychosis is not manifested in a vacuum. It is related to the person exhibiting it. The more intelligent the person is the more complicated their psychosis can be. Paranoia may be dealt with by becoming super quiet, I have had patients how don't move or speak bc their anxiety is so high. Other will become belligerent lashing out and even becoming violent because they are paranoid we are trying to hurt them. If your character is strong willed the paranoia may fuel them to attack friends and loved ones for fear of their betrayal, again these fears stem from real anxiety. It would start as realistic fears like fear of rejection from a lover, or fear of disappointing a parent. That is fed on by the psychosis and manifests through the voices they hear and the delusions they develop. But as time goes on the disorganization increases, the longer they hear those voices saying thing the more outrageous their beliefs become and the mind loses the ability to organize thoughts so things begin to jump from one random thought to the next. This leads to things like circumfrential thought where the patient will talk about a bus going by and then the bus is white, white like clouds, clouds are in the heavens and they are signs from god, the clouds are god sending me messages, I am gods prophet. etc... they usually have a focus that they will always come back to, religiously preoccupied will always tied their thoughts back to their religious delusion, paranoid patients will always tie things back to their fear delusion etc. 

Whew, ok as far as the affective portion, you just add emotional instability on top of everything else. These are the symptoms of bipolar disorder. which means that they will exhibit signs of either depression(more common) and short periods of mania. the mania is usually manifested by being really happy and really energetic, they are more likely to become aggressive and impulsive, during these phases they are more likely to use drugs and alcohol make really impulsive choices, sexual promiscuity, they seek out everything pleasure to keep that high going. They often don't sleep for days. 


So that is a super quick run through of schizoaffective really overly generalized, if you have any specific questions don't hesitate to message me. I could probably come up with some good specific stories if you give me a specific question. As far as a good resource on views on what its like to have the disorder from the point of view of the patient I can't really help you. I don't know of any really great places. The stuff listed above is probably as good as I could come up with. Its rare for psych patients to be able to give good accounts of what its like the ones that are actively sick rarely able to verbalize it what its like and those who are being treated effectively tend to have a hard time really remembering what it was like during their acute psychosis periods. At least that is what I have seen from people I know.  hope that helps some I know its really scattered all over the place let me know if you need clarifications.


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