I’ve been a mental health practitioner and researcher for over 25 years. I’ve been a fiction reader for 44 years. In the last decade or so, I’ve noticed more and more fiction includes MCs (or side characters) with mental health concerns or more severe mental disorders.
At the outset, I’m glad more awareness is being raised about mental health in storytelling when it’s done right. When a writer doesn’t do their research, it is obvious to those who either suffer from, work in the field of or are a loved one of someone with that particular mental health disorder.
Although a small percentage of the population suffers from schizophrenia, it seems to be the mental health condition I see most misrepresented in the literature (and in movies). Schizophrenia is not dissociative identity disorder (sometimes referred to colloquially as multiple personality disorder*). For the most part, this error has been corrected in recent films, but for those in the general public who have not had a mental health 101 course, I still hear these terms used interchangeably, sadly.
Last night, my husband and I watched The Holdovers with Paul Giamatti. When Angus, the young antagonist, goes to see his father in a mental health institution, it is clear that the scene is going to lead to a grand reveal that the father has schizophrenia. After a brief dialogue, the father puts his hand on Angus’s hand and says, “They’re putting something in my food.” Bingo. Later, when Paul’s character is getting berated by the boy’s parents, the mother mentions that Angus’s father has schizophrenia and early dementia. I jerked my head up and huffed loudly at my television. First, the father of a 17-year-old boy is likely in his mid-to-late thirties and according to the storyline, the father was fine, then poof, just a few years prior he started acting bizarrely. The onset of schizophrenia that late in life is so rare that in my years of serving hundreds of people with schizophrenia, the latest onset I’d seen was early thirties. And I don’t even need to comment on the dementia. I’ll let that one linger.
Last summer I read a book by an author who shall remain unnamed for purposes of not throwing this superstar bestselling women’s fiction author (no, not CH) under any oncoming traffic, but I was aghast at the references to teen cutting. Not the fact that the teen character cut herself, which is something I’ve read in many women’s fiction books, it was the way the author described why the teen self-injured and how the MC handled it. I wouldn’t have wanted any mother of a young girl who self-injured to read the book, let alone a teen girl (although teen boys do cut themselves, they are not the target audience for such books).
I am heartened to see more suicide prevention lines and other helplines being posted before and after episodes of shows and movies when self-injurious behavior and suicide are themes. I would like to see this in books, too. This may exist, and it has escaped my notice, but my memory of the thirty or so books I’ve read in the last year does not conjure any (and over half the books had mental health themes…it’s trending). It could, perhaps, be in the end matter, and I missed it. Maybe someone reading this post can direct me to this? I think Stephen King did weave it into a book of his I read this past year— the exact book is escaping me, but the story had someone who was suicidal, and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number was written into a dialogue. Suicide is a common occurrence in fiction and film, but I rarely see literature handle it as well as film does.
There is a lot of education and miseducation embedded in fiction. When I watched Billions (it seems like I’m a big PG fan, no?) I ended each season thinking I knew how to run a hedge fund. Okay, not really, but I did learn quite a bit about the business…or did I? All you hedge fund managers, feel free to weigh in!
As writers, we are often reminded to “Write what you know.” Many writers suffer from mental health disorders, and as someone who is in recovery from depression and anxiety (not just an educator and researcher here, folks), I see the allure of writing from our own experience. I believe this can go a long way in connecting with readers who also suffer, or love those who suffer, but I also think we should handle the topics with care, keeping in the front of our minds that our experience is ours, and cannot be generalized. We are a sample size of one. Our mental health can inform our writing, and that may help readers feel like they’re not alone, but they will also quickly dismiss us if, in our writing, we assert some “facts” about our mental health experience that seem to be forcing them down the readers’ throats.
Thank you to those writers who share their darkness, their pain, and their resilience. Thank you to you writers who, in vulnerability, show us the heavy burdens you carry and invite us to carry them with you. I am simply asking that we be mindful and use emotional intellectual honesty when it comes to writing about mental health and mental illness. Keep your readers in your mind and your heart. Have a reader who has experience read it and give you feedback. If you hesitate to do that, I would hesitate to put it out there.
Donna,
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this and I am going to check out this author. I love that you chatted with him and he was accessible and engaged- especially about his mental health. He sounds like the kind of author I’d like to promote. Xoxo Jen
Great topic! I wanted to add how impressed I have been with one of my favorite authors Jeremy Robinson and his transparency about his struggles with mental health. He has openly tackled the subject (I thought very well) about anxiety, depression and PTSD in some of his characters in his sci-fi novels. He has frequently added author’s notes at the end of the novel openly talking about his own struggles with mental health and how it has affected his health, life and work. After finishing one such book, I contacted him through social media to see what had finally helped him get his life back on track (something he had alluded to in his notes). To my delight he answered me immediately with details of his treatment that helped. Mental health struggles have been so taboo for so long that it is truly refreshing to see it openly talked about, especially in the spirit of “yes I struggle with this, it affects me this way and this is how I cope”. Keep up the great work, Jen!