Writing About Mental Disorders

I know it's pretty popular to write about mental disorders. So I figured it deserved it's own thread. What have you written about? Why or why do you not write about these disorders? Do you decide to write a disorder or does it just happen naturally? Answer or ask any questions you want.

Mental health topics are pretty much anything that isn't technically a disorder. A coping mechanism, cutting, suicide for mental reasons, etc. I've written about regression, which is an unhealthy mental coping mechanism.

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I've written about the following mental disorders [not all are finished or on Mibba]:

- Paranoid schizophrenia. [My Ceiling Demons.]
- Bipolar. [Manic.]
- Clinical depression. [Too many to name.]
- Post traumatic stress disorder. [After Supper.]
- Anorexia. [To the Bones.]
- Bulimia. [Unnamed, unposted story.]
- Dissociative identity disorder [multiple personality disorder]. [Put Us All Together, We Are Beads Upon a String.]
- Obsessive compulsive disorder. [Blank Canvas.]
- Gender identity disorder [I suppose, since you have to be diagnosed that to get a sex change]. [Billie Jo, Closet Full of Dresses.]

Generally I don't pick a disorder and decide to write it.
Sometimes I do. For instance, I decided to write about anorexia and then To the Bones was born.
I also decided to write Dissociative Identity Disorder and Beads was started.
The same with Blank Canvas.

Generally, however, it happens. Either I'll already know enough about the disorder that it will work it's way in or I'll have a list of growing symptoms and I'll figure out what mental disorder it is halfway through the story.

I didn't even realize I'd given will PTSD in After Supper until I was writing this post.

I guess Sounds could be considered a story about a mental disorder. I didn't specify what, if anything, it was and I don't pretend to be all that knowledgable of the symptons, but it makes me think of schizophrenia.

One of my very first fanfics had slight mentions of anorexia, but it was such a terribly written story. This theme continues in its sequel, but I'm eventually going to rewrite it.

I feel like I end up writing about schizophrenia a lot. The first time I did it was in Textbook Vegas -- I hadn't meant to do it, but I felt like I had to make something wrong with Brendon. Seeing his childhood best friend everywhere was sort of attractive, so I went with it. Around the time Brendon moves back and meets up with Ryan again, his disorder is suppose to get worse; I never really figured out how to do that...

I wrote two different chapters with two different characters for Support -- Andrew Volpe and William Beckett. I only gave Andrew schizophrenia (he basically just saw his dead fiance around his apartment and all) and when I decided to change characters, I gave William OCD as well. I think that's all I gave him, but I don't even remember anymore...I know he had a fear of ceiling fans. Since Support is a story where all of the characters have a disorder, I had to give my character something, and I had written Textbook Vegas before hand. I felt kind of comfortable using the same disorder.

There was also some schitzophrenia implied in Love Like Summer, as well as anorexia//bulimia. I wrote that early last summer I think, or even the summer before; it was my first attempt at using a disorder and I hadn't even meant to do it. Gerard also sort of suffered from night terrors, if that counts; Frank was the bulimic character....I think that's it. For now.

Something was wrong with Ryan in Sensitive; at least, I think. My friend askedme the other night if he had a disorder or he was just a pansy; I tried telling her something had to have been wrong with him, but I've yet to figure out what it was. Disorder or not, that was the whole point to the story, so it kind of had to be there...

Okay, now I'm done.

I think...

I've wanted to write about a mental disorder a few times, because I've come up with storylines where characters with disorders could fir, but only as minor characters, to give the story a little more...oomph :tehe:
But then I think, 'Yeah, I'm going to screw this up and people are going to laugh at me.' so I don't.

I generally make my characters depressed and normally have the mkill themselves or at least attempt it. I'm just drawn to that in particular. So in Bad Timing there's an anti-depressant drug overdose, in Stained Glass there's an almost-attempt to fall off a roof over 10 stories high, and in Calla Lilies there's a very dramatic suicide that occurs (I intend on rewriting that so I can put it into Of Sugar and Ice). Click is a second-person sort of fuck-the-system suicide fic.

Brittle and Fragile deals with anorexia, some kind of depression, and my friend whom read it claimed that it had "narcissism, a vanity complex, low self-esteem issues, and seperation anxiety". So um, yeah.

One and the Other is a really fucked up kind of almost string of consciousness. It's very hard to understand but the undertone in it is that one of the characters is highly messed up and believes that the other doesn't love him and/or shouldn't love him and wants him to leave because it shouldn't be, while the other doesn't understand.

Uhm, what else. The Music Box can sort of count because the main character has a messed up mental state and that's seen when he shoots another student.

In my other chaptered fic, Of Honey and Ink, the main character's brother commits suicide because of his secret battle with depression and jumps off the roof of his high school onto his car. This eventually leads to his sister losing her mind. It's not complete yet, neither is OSAI.

And My Blue, Syn(es)thetic Bricks isn't exactly a mental disorder, it's a condition. Synesthesia, to be exact. It's fluffy. Cute. Not usual for me.

:shifty I like killing my characters.

Well, I did have a story where Mike started having conversations in his head, but that was really...ew...so I deleted it.
In Ringing In The Sane, Jared's pretty crazy. I don't know if he has any disorders or anything specific. He's just...completely torn up, his mind's a mess, I suppose. He also cuts himself, but not very often; he hasn't in a while.

I don't often plan to make my characters have some sort of mental issue. If they have any it just developes as I go along as apart of the character, but not as the central plot point. And it's rarely anything... "sad". Like they suffer from depression or are bipolar and whatnot. Characters who are sad or serious all the time... They're just no fun! If a character of mine has a mental problem, then most likely there's going to be some humor to come of it... I like reading about them though ._.

People say to write what you know. So when a character shows up with crippling depression, bipolar disorder, schizphrenia, etc, it tends not to surprise the people who know me. If anything, it's somewhat theraputic to be able to write these characters; it's a wonderful outlet. (I'm not schizophrenic, by the way. But it does run in my family and has affected me more than I would have ever wished it would. I'm not yet cleared for it, either, so I do fear that someday it could affect me in other ways.)

I've written about two.

I gave Pete Wentz the Peter Pan Syndrome in a oneshot I submitted in a challenge based on mental disorders. I thought I did it really badly. :shifty He also showed signs of being a schizophrenic and he had a fear of sharp objects.

Then I gave Ryan Ross the Histrionic Personality Disorder. It's actually funny, I didn't even know I gave him the damn disorder before I looked it up. It's about the same era when I wrote my challenge entry (^) and was looking for mental disorders.

I’ve only done it once, intentionally, and that was in my first chaptered story that was posted online, Shutting the Door to the Past.

As it was a fan fictional story that had connections to Green Day’s album American Idiot the main character, Billie Joe, has a whole heap of disorders. Mainly because I found them when studying the album. So I simply transferred any mental disorder I could find signs of in American Idiot into my story plus adding Billie Joe’s own. And so Billie Joe in the story suffers from Borderline, panic attacks and Anxiety and seems to have Multiple Personality Disorder.

I did not only write about them because they can be discerned in American Idiot but because I, at the time of beginning the story, had a huge interest for mental disorders. I had researched many disorders thoroughly and I tend to write what’s on my mind a lot. Write what I know. Though to write what I know does not necessarily mean to write what I have experienced, only teeny tiny scraps of what can be found in my fictional stories are things that I’ve actually been through myself (and most likely in a whole other way than they’re being portrayed.) Personal experiences do always tend to sneak into your writing somehow, especially emotions. But write what I know is more about what I have knowledge about or what I’m mulling over at the time of writing. At the time when Shutting the Door to the Past was being written I had actually been trying to find a mental disorder that I could diagnose myself with because I wanted something to blame my state of mind on. I did not find anything but I had it all still spinning in my head. And also I was talking to friends and trying to help them with their disorders. So all these three things in combination lead to writing a story with so much focus on mental disorders and coping mechanisms. It was simply something I knew a lot about and which was on my mind a lot.

However, Shutting the Door to the Past isn’t actually about the disorders but they’re a very important part of the story as without them the plot would not work. And I didn’t decide on exactly what disorders Billie Joe would suffer from apart from that he was going to suffer from panic attacks. The rest just turned out the way it did and I sort of diagnosed him as the story went along.

It’s possible that other characters in other stories of mine could be diagnosed, I haven’t checked. Generally I will notice if they have a mental disorder as I remember many of the disorders I studied about one and two years ago when I took classes in psychology and three years ago as well when I just read about it on my spare time. But sometimes I don’t really think about it because the symptoms are just there and I put them down just like any other character trait. Though more often than not I decide beforehand if the story is a story in which the characters could have a mental disorder or not.

Oh, and I just realized that I have a one-shot, “Inside a Morbid Mind”, which can be found in my Bedtime Stories Collection where the main character has some type of disorder. Or maybe several. I just never sat down and figured out exactly what.

I don't like to say that I write about a certain disorder.
For once, I had certain problems with accepting the fact that mental disorders exist when I wrote most story posted on mibba. So yeah.

Anyway, Hole started from a discussion I had with someone about her suicide attempt, in a way. Well, she told me depression felt almost like a giant hole in her chest. I elaborated on the rest based on personal experience? The hole became a black one, void. I had broken up with my girlfriend the night before, and when I woke up I felt this diffuse sensation as if the whole world was changed, mutilated in a way, as it had been pulled through a black hole into an other dimention. Actually most of my stories are surreal in nature, well the ones that are not are not really my stories. Because my stories are about how the world gets crushed, burnt, mutilated on all levels after an irrevocable loss.

I'm such an emotional writer. v_v Well, I don't write anymore, the loss was somehow suppressed.

I also wrote a bit about anxiety, especially in the What Are You Afraid Of? chapter. But only because I could feel anxiety at the time.

I worked on a story about post-partum psychosis for a while. But I'm still working on it. I don't think I wanted it to be about post-partum psychosis, but rather about wanting to love someone desperately. I think the mental disorder ruined the story. :think: I'm going to change it, I'm still fond of the idea of falling in love with a story character. I had a crazy idea about writing a story on anorexia from a subjective point of view -a lot like Hamsun's Hunger- but thank God, I gave up on that idea.

I don't write about certain things, I just write about my life. It's rather sad actually. :coffee:

I've written a couple of stories about Mental disorders.

Gear Shifter was about Bipolar. Paper Thin, Paper Skin is an unposted story about anorexia. And Insane isn't exactly a mental disorder, I don't know what it is. I think it's just Ryan having a nervous breakdown.

I found writing about them so much easier. I feel like it just kind of comes out when I write about them. In Gear Shifter, I even took things that had actually happened to my cousin and put them in the story. Usually I can write about Mental Disorders that I have some sort of affiliation or experience with.

The Drip Drip Drop was definitely about something, but I don't think it was a certain disorder. Just Ryan losing touch with reality and going to a hospital.

Not really a disorder per se but I’ve given Shawn in At Pride’s Expense a mild form of Dermatophagia.
Which is biting on your fingers so much that you damage them from mildly red rashes to more severe wounds.
His character probably has it because I’ve seen Shawn bite his fingers every now and then and likely it's also
somewhat because it’s something I’m familiar with seeing as I do the same myself. x]

My newest PATD fic deals with multiple personality disorder and Amnesia.
Lately psychological fics have gotten to me, and I had to write one.

I'm not sure what mental disease exactly I'm using... but a girl is living in her head. It's been really fun to write, I have complete freedom with her hallucinations.

What's in a name?:

Not really a disorder per se but I’ve given Shawn in At Pride’s Expense a mild form of Dermatophagia.
Which is biting on your fingers so much that you damage them from mildly red rashes to more severe wounds.
His character probably has it because I’ve seen Shawn bite his fingers every now and then and likely it's also
somewhat because it’s something I’m familiar with seeing as I do the same myself. x]

:think: Oh dear, now that I've looked up that, I think I have that. I constantly bite/pick at my cuticles and they're all bloodied up and never heal..
I may have to read this.

I was about to say 'no' and leave, but while reading through the posts I realised I guess I have. In Simple, Ryan tried to commit suicide, but I dunno. It wasn't exactly pinpointed that he had depression or anything. I don't know. He just missed Brendon, and Brendon was dead, and he was just using logic really.

Also in another, Ryan was sort of a narcissist. I think he was. It was either that or histrionic personality disorder, but it was one of the two. I don't think I did that very well, but after writing it I had this sympathy for ridiculously cocky characters. Plus I re-wrote it like twenty times, and I still hate it, but I love Ryan.

I was going to write this story where Ryan had another personality that he made because he couldn't handle himself. It was supposed to be Brendon, and it wasn't supposed to be revealed until the end. Then I realised no, that was stupid, you can't write that.

Funnily enough, a few months afterwards, I read Fight Club. >.>

As you can tell, I'm not really in tune with it. It just happens really. And I feel bad for Ryan, considering he's the victim in all of them.

Seraphim:

I was going to write this story where Ryan had another personality that he made because he couldn't handle himself. It was supposed to be Brendon, and it wasn't supposed to be revealed until the end. Then I realised no, that was stupid, you can't write that.

Funnily enough, a few months afterwards, I read Fight Club. >.>

I read a story by my favorite Ryden author where Brendon created another Brendon [copy of himself] because he couldn't deal with all the hecticness in his life. It wasn't revealed until the very end of Part Two [it was a three-part] and it scared me so much I cried.

So if you wanted to try taking a stab at it, I could give you her link and I would definitely be interested in reading it.

Not all fiction has to be 100% plausible. Sometimes it's nice to read things that break from the rules.

In Forever Frozen I'm writing about anorexia/bulimia. I suppose I'm writing about it to get over what happened to a girl who's very close to me. So, most of the symptoms and effects I've seen first hand.