# How to write about mental-illness respectfully (1 Viewer)



## takadote26 (Jun 13, 2022)

So, I am writing a story where an antagonistic narrator (Mariana) suffers from major dissociation and severe depression, but having little experience with either disorders how do I as an author write about these disorders in a respectful and researched manner?


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## RGS (Jun 13, 2022)

Honestly, the fact that you're concerned about treating it with respect tells me that you'll do just fine.


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## bdcharles (Jun 13, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> So, I am writing a story where an antagonistic narrator suffers from major dissociation and severe depression, but having little experience with either disorders how do I as an author write about these disorders in a respectful and researched manner?


I'd say primarily to talk to people with those disorders if you're keen to get an accurate impression.


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## Louanne Learning (Jun 13, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> So, I am writing a story where an antagonistic narrator suffers from major dissociation and severe depression, but having little experience with either disorders how do I as an author write about these disorders in a respectful and researched manner?


This will be the narrator? You have a challenge ahead of you. Dissociation means one is disconnected from their own thoughts, feelings, memories, sense of identity. Perhaps there is a way to have such a person tell a story, and I would certainly be interested in reading it. And also, with severe depression, one does not even have the motivation to brush their teeth, never mind tell a story. They are not interested in anything around them. Again, I am not saying it can't be done, but it will require a great understanding. If possible, read the memoirs of persons who have been stricken with these mental illnesses.


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## Theglasshouse (Jun 13, 2022)

Seigried007 had the disease or still has. If you want you can try to contact him and if he agrees he can volunteer. All I used to suffer from a lot that is mentioned in the opening post is depression.


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## Alanzie (Jun 14, 2022)

Find a support group for the friends and families of those afflicted on-line.  You don't need to participate, just 'hover' in the background.  It's amazing how much you can learn from those who love the ones with the conditions.  I'm speaking from experience.


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## takadote26 (Jun 14, 2022)

Theglasshouse said:


> Seigried007 had the disease or still has. If you want you can try to contact him and if he agrees he can volunteer. All I used to suffer from a lot that is mentioned in the opening post is depression.


I tried contacting Seigried007 via PM just now, but he doesn't seem to exist according to this message from writingforum: _The following recipients could not be found: Seigried007. _Are you sure he exists or is onsite?


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## Jeko (Jun 14, 2022)

If you want to do good research, I recommend seeing if you can get in touch with a local mental health awareness charity or something similar. Getting a conversation going with such an organization could give you some important pointers and also point you in the right direction for further research.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 14, 2022)

Seig was banned awhile back, btw.


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## Theglasshouse (Jun 14, 2022)

I didn't know he was banned to be honest until Bornforburning mentioned it to be honest. I assumed he was taking a small break probably because of his illness or other reasons. I remember him when he got sick. It's unfortunate, but it happens. I would go to a mental health board as mentioned. I think you might find some people either a psychiatrist or individuals willing to communicate on this issue. @Alanzie's post is spot on. They are easy to find on a google search. Good luck.


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## CyberWar (Jun 14, 2022)

The thing about mental disorders is that most people tend to picture the extreme cases, the proverbial wannabe Napoleons and tinfoil hats, when most of the time they aren't plainly obvious. Most of the time, you will only be able to tell something is wrong with a person through extended interaction, his disorder not being apparent from a single conversation.

Things like psychosis, delusions, hallucinations and split personality (the "plain old crazy") aren't really that common. Far more commonly, mental disorders will take an inconspicuous form like depression, attention-seeking behaviour, hyperactivity, anxiety attacks or the sort. They can be no less detrimental to the person than outright insanity, but usually aren't readily apparent, and the victim may very well be able to pass for an ordinary healthy person. People around this person will most likely dismiss his affliction as a personality quirk and only take notice if it really starts to impair his well-being. You could very well live your entire life next to a mentally-ill person and not even suspect there's anything clinically wrong with that person unless or until it gets really bad.

One example is a girl a good friend of mine used to date a while ago. A very sociable, outgoing and charming person at first glance - but also what folks would call a "drama queen", a pathological attention-seeker who would go as far as self-injury and suicide threats if she felt she wasn't receiving enough attention from friends and romantic partners. As I later figured, she exhibited all the hallmark signs of Histrionic Personality Disorder. She was otherwise a completely normal, reasonable young woman that nobody would suspect of having a mental illness if it weren't for these sometimes self-destructive episodes of attention-seeking.

Another example - a personal friend who suffers from anxiety attacks severe enough to require medication. A completely regular guy in all respects, save for occasions when he just freezes up in sudden terror, requiring great effort to compose himself. Again, I would never know if he hadn't mentioned it, and would have most likely mistaken his panic attack for mere recollection of a bad personal memory.

So, the best way to be politically-correct about these things is to just write them how they really are.


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## BornForBurning (Jun 14, 2022)

> Most of the time, you will only be able to tell something is wrong with a person through extended interaction, his disorder not being apparent from a single conversation.


This can be the case even with extreme mental illness. Someone may seem perfectly normal, right up until the moment they tell you about the camera the government implanted in their back.


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## KatPC (Jun 15, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> So, I am writing a story where an antagonistic narrator suffers from major dissociation and severe depression, but having little experience with either disorders how do I as an author write about these disorders in a respectful and researched manner?


Hi @takadote26,

There are websites online for people suffering with mental illness. You can join into forums and simply observe people's posts and members' replies. It can be quite graphic and disturbing but you can get a really strong sense of people's struggles and how it consumes.


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## Xander416 (Jun 19, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> So, I am writing a story where an antagonistic narrator suffers from major dissociation and severe depression, but having little experience with either disorders how do I as an author write about these disorders in a respectful and researched manner?


IDK anything about major dissociation, but depression is a constant gnawing battle with an overwhelmingly powerful mind that tells you you can't when you desperately want to believe that you _can_ and it's not something I'd wish on even the one person in the world that I hate the most.


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## takadote26 (Jul 26, 2022)

Well, are there any other resources I could try to research mental illness as a whole? I'd try university psychology textbooks but they are a bit pricey.


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## Louanne Learning (Jul 27, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> Well, are there any other resources I could try to research mental illness as a whole? I'd try university psychology textbooks but they are a bit pricey.



Here is a list of memoirs dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder






						Dissociative Identity Disorder Books
					


Books shelved as dissociative-identity-disorder: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities by Flora Rheta Schreiber, Th...




					www.goodreads.com
				




Here is a list of memoirs dealing with anxiety and depression









						You’re Not Alone: Moving Memoirs About Anxiety and Depression | Brightly
					


Books can go a long way in reminding us that we're not alone. These memoirs offer real and insightful perspectives on struggles with anxiety and depression.





					www.readbrightly.com
				




Hopefully, they can provide some insights.


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## Moon Child (Aug 28, 2022)

Xander416 said:


> IDK anything about major dissociation, but depression is a constant gnawing battle with an overwhelmingly powerful mind that tells you you can't when you desperately want to believe that you _can_ and it's not something I'd wish on even the one person in the world that I hate the most.


Xander416 is completely right. Depression is bloody awful, and that's an understatement. You wake up in the morning exhausted, you drag yourself from bed because you know you need too to live your life, you dress in fresh pjs as they're comfy, you prepare food only because if not your head hurts and adds to the misery. You disappear into reading books or games so that you don't have to face reality for awhile. You wash the dishes at night simply because it's been instilled you do not leave the dishes dirty overnight, you go to bed only to not sleep and then you repeat it the next day. Oh! And there's the annoying voice of your mother in your mind informing you of things you can't do etc, like saying how you'll never be happy as you're so pathetic you wear pjs all day.


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## TL Murphy (Aug 28, 2022)

Another strategy might be to write this character straight and never mention mental illness.  You can model it on someone you know or on a researched subject but don’t identify any kind of mental disorder.  Just write the behaviour the best you can.  Many people with mental disorders are perfectly normal most of the time, which makes it hard to identify mental illness.  But then they can have episodes or slip in and out of extreme behaviour, or it might all be very borderline. The reader will eventually figure it out without you needing to ever say what it is.


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## JBF (Aug 28, 2022)

TL Murphy said:


> The reader will eventually figure it out without you needing to ever say what it is.


 
One hopes.


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## Yumi Koizumi (Aug 28, 2022)

We have disability in the family, causing all kinds of mental and other health problems. It's hereditary though. I'm wondering if you are making it part of a character's traits for a particular reason. That reason, like awareness perhaps, requires a totally different approach than one where it gets in the way of the character doing what they need to do in your story, up to the point of even having others ridicule or harass them. Maybe even bullying.

If it is going to be something that is debilitating, which depression has a history of, I wonder if you are looking at that. Like a challenge is to how someone would reveal that characteristic about themselves in their narration. I mean, you specifically said that you wanted to have the person narrating be afflicted by, if I'm allowed to use that word, one or more disabilities.

So with that said, I would be hesitant to make any kinds of suggestions until it was clear whether this was going to be a story of someone overcoming any impairments, or the impairments causing them negative experiences in life, or perhaps they were resentful for people that were" healthy"...

If you do approach someone for research, and I think everybody has said already that research is key, if you were to say to someone that you are interested in writing a story whereby someone had this particular infliction, but you wanted to show it in a positive light, not something negative and to be ridiculed, but rather to be understood, I can't imagine anybody not giving you 100% cooperation in your work.

I think this is probably the best way for someone to approach someone with a disability, with the expressed intent of sharing a truthful, factual, real world way that it messes with people, and how capable those who are struggling against it really are.

I wouldn't necessarily say out of the gate it's the _antagonist_ hahaha... But I am curious how you plan to reveal and use that aspect of a person or persons in supporting the plot, supporting the honesty of the characters and the situations that they are in, or if it's just a side thing that isn't going to consume the whole story, making it, "That book about depression".

Having dealt with one of the things that you want to give as an attribute for your antagonist, I can definitely see where you have an opportunity here to do some real good.


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## YggNate (Aug 28, 2022)

Might be a bit off topic here, bit tangential, but... I am always interested in the way a social group in authority has historically used 'mental health' and specifically the threat of incarceration in a lunatic asylum with accompanying stigmatising and ostracization as a way of imposing upon others prescribed ways of thinking; talking; behaving. I am not saying that the brain/mind cannot in certain circumstances come up with some pretty idiosyncratic solutions to complex problems. But that the whole subject leaves more room for exploring interesting questions than defining disorders as first diagnosed by such-and-such. Other than that I imagine you may be able to obtain case studies for your specific conditions from good libraries/bookshops. Happy researching!


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## Yumi Koizumi (Aug 28, 2022)

Yup. It's always, "For your safety, and the safety of others" to have any non-compliant types out of the picture. Look at how many people looked at Guantanamo Bay and thought of it as a merciful necessary place. That slippery slope led to all the Walmarts down south that were turned into internment camps for children when they broke up families with no intention of bringing them back together, because they kept no records of whose child and whose parent.


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## YggNate (Aug 28, 2022)

They used to say we were possessed by the devil and needed to be exorcized. Now they say we are mentally unwell and need to be drugged. Same bunch of f... why I oughtta...


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## takadote26 (Sep 18, 2022)

The reason I wanted to give the antagonistic narrator a mental illness is to imply that because of her overuse of 'shadow magic' (because she's actually a dragon), it worsens her mental condition. So, shadow magic = worse mental health.


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## Tettsuo (Sep 26, 2022)

As a child of a schizophrenic parent, I find it extremely annoying when writers attempt to give the "good side" of mental illness or try to give a blessing in disguise angle to it. It's like cheering for a shiny new penny in a huge pile of sh*t.


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## Parabola (Sep 26, 2022)

Near as I can tell, don't worry so much about labels as putting words to the patterns you've observed. This will help your stuff come out more naturally.


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## YggNate (Sep 27, 2022)

Some might say that a national culture can 'be of a mind' & that that can get sick. Some might perceive that for example 'British character' with its seeming ubiquitous insistence on the moral goodness of Leviathan & families constitutionally protected against legal prosecution that spend their inheritance persecuting the other, is nuts.

It may all be relative, & to do with the dehumanising aspects of conformist pragmatism. The Taoists might say that the sickness of their minds manifests itself in their bodies.


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## Sinister (Sep 27, 2022)

I wouldn't recommend my method of doing it.  I say method, but it's not like I read a book about Stanislavski and made a conscious decision about it.  It just so happens I'm in a unique position to write about four or five mental disorders, a consolation prize of sorts.  But as mentioned above, that's like being happy about finding a penny in a pile of shit.

-Sin


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## takadote26 (Oct 6, 2022)

Quick question, while roleplaying as Mariana (while in a game) I _did_ notice that she had some "dissociative fugue" symptoms- is 'fugue' in itself a symptom of dissociation, or not?


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## Ladyserpentine (Oct 8, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> So, I am writing a story where an antagonistic narrator (Mariana) suffers from major dissociation and severe depression, but having little experience with either disorders how do I as an author write about these disorders in a respectful and researched manner?


People who suffer from dissociative identity disorder can wreak some real havoc, so this is a very interesting choice for your antagonist. Most often, this disorder is a result of trauma/abuse (often sexual), especially experienced as a child. What often happens is the child cannot process the event(s) they endured, so they invent an alternate personality(ies) who absorbs those traumas. Doing plenty of research and providing a sympathetic, realistic backstory is probably the best way to be respectful. I would go to the library and immerse yourself in the psychology section if possible.
I believe fugue can be a symptom of extremely severe cases of dissociative disorder. However, it seems like you could also attribute this symptom to her overuse of shadow magic.


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## PrairieHostage (Oct 8, 2022)

takadote26 said:


> The reason I wanted to give the antagonistic narrator a mental illness is to imply that because of her overuse of 'shadow magic' (because she's actually a dragon), it worsens her mental condition. So, shadow magic = worse mental health.


After reading the above, I see you're including mental illness as a side effect to magic and your story includes a dragon. So we've left the realm of reality and entered fantasy. 

In that case, I don't think you need to do a whole lot of research. It would be different if your story was about someone with real mental illness but it's not. 

Think of all the story characters who've gone crazy. The proverbial mad scientist depicted in Jekyll & Hyde, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the megalomaniac Raoul Silva in Skyfall. As a writer you have free reign in fantasy. Nothing your antagonist does will insult anyone with mental illness because they know they're reading fantasy.


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## Asterion (Oct 8, 2022)

A good place to start would be the work of Gabor Mate. He was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently too if you can't get his books.

He focuses mostly on intergenerational trauma and the effect this has on biological processes.


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## takadote26 (Oct 11, 2022)

Ladyserpentine said:


> People who suffer from dissociative identity disorder can wreak some real havoc, so this is a very interesting choice for your antagonist. Most often, this disorder is a result of trauma/abuse (often sexual), especially experienced as a child. What often happens is the child cannot process the event(s) they endured, so they invent an alternate personality(ies) who absorbs those traumas. Doing plenty of research and providing a sympathetic, realistic backstory is probably the best way to be respectful. I would go to the library and immerse yourself in the psychology section if possible.
> I believe fugue can be a symptom of extremely severe cases of dissociative disorder. However, it seems like you could also attribute this symptom to her overuse of shadow magic.


Yes, Mariana does suffer from 'dissociative identity disorder'... You guessed right! Any other questions about Mariana I can answer? Also: what is an alter?


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