Mental Illness

I started this thread last year, and since I'm working on the same novel this year (I'm a rebel!), I figured I might as well put this back up!

Who has mental health/mental illness as a main/major theme in their novel this year? Does your main character or another important character in your story suffer from a mental disorder? If so, which one, and is the disorder an important part of your novel? Or is it just a part of your character that isn't focused on much? Tell me a bit about the other mental-illness-related NaNo novels out there! :)

BONUS QUESTION (only if you feel comfortable sharing!): Do you yourself suffer from a mental disorder, whether it's the same as your character's or a different one? Did this drive you to write a novel featuring mental illness? How do you think your own disorder will help and/or challenge you while writing your NaNo novel?

For anyone who's curious, my novel (which I was writing last year and am now editing, which is why I'm a rebel) is the second book in a two-part psychological drama series revolving entirely around mental illness. The series is essentially the life story of my protagonist over a 17-year period, including his diagnosis and entire recovery process. He primarily suffers from a severe case of borderline personality disorder, but is also later diagnosed with comorbid major depressive disorder. Other characters in the series also have psychiatric conditions, most prominently sociopathy (one of the major characters is a psychopath). I do not have any of these disorders, so writing this series was a bit of a challenge for me and still is. The fact that I'm fascinated by abnormal psych as well as an aspiring psychiatrist definitely made the three and a half years of research I did for these books fun, though!

Can't wait to see who else out there is writing a mental-illness-themed novel. :)

One of my main characters, Owen, has a sister with schizophrenia. Their father is schizophrenic as well, but he won't feature in the book as much as the sister does. Owen's story isn't the main plot, but I've been playing around with the idea of having his sister involved with the book's resolution in a big way. Owen and his friends are being hunted by some kind of paranormal beastie (I'm a little behind on my planning lol), and I'm thinking that her altered consciousness will help her track it, run from it, fight it, or some combination of the three.

I don't have a very interesting answer to your bonus question as I've never been diagnosed with any kind of disorder, but I do have a bit of a family history (I have an uncle that swears he was abducted by aliens, and more of my family than not is being treated for depression or similar disorders), so I've always had a morbid curiosity on the subject.

My story is about two very creative people who were the target of emotionally/psychologically abuse in childhood. I can't give you a 'diagnosis' for what they experience, neither could the psychiatrists I've consulted. Emotional/psychological abuse, especially if it is covert, often isn't recognized by mental health workers. Both suffer from a variety of symptoms, the most important ones being addiction, anxiety and depression. In the story, they renovate a dilapitated castle and the surrounding grounds (overgrown with <= dog rose), which symbolizes dealing with /overcoming the psychological devastation of their youth.

Bonus question: the main female character is me. She's the only flesh and blood person in the story. All the others are archetypes 'come to life' in one form or another. (This sounds more contrived than I mean, see explanation below).

I wasn't helped by regular therapies, and in some cases even got worse. In the end I helped myself by reading works of C.G. Jung and other Jungian psycho-analists. Jungian psychology is difficult to define and I can't say something like 'I analyzed myself'. It wasn't such a systematic thing. I just followed my intuition. For me, writing is a form of what Jung callled 'active imagination'.

I don't know if I'm going to do this for my NaNo yet, but one of my novels, Parasitos, has three characters with disorders (thus far). They're arguably the main characters, although the third character, Alex, gets thrown to the side a lot because he's not as a developed as the other two. I usually don't ever explicitly state what's their specific disorder, but their traits are describing mostly anxiety and personality disorders.

The first character, Erik, has both anxiety disorders (GAD, Phobias) and at least one personality disorder (leaning Schizoid/Avoidant). The second character, Tom, has Panic Disorder, and is leaning Borderline/Histrionic mostly. The third, Alex, has no anxiety disorders (and doesn't seem to experience fear at all), and is Narcissistic/Antisocial.

Erik and Tom describe my two basic responses to my anxiety disorders: either give up (Erik; ie. to give up everything and withdraw), or give in (Tom; ie. to give in to the rapid emotional changes, etc). Alex is sort of what I imagine I might be like if I was totally devoid of fear; there are obviously good and bad things to it, but Alex tends to exemplify the bad more thus far.

Myself, I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, and may have a personality disorder (most likely Avoidant or OCPD). So I try not to set anything in stone since I don't have definite experiences as having Antisocial Personality Disorder, for example. I do read a lot of the diagnostic lists for it, just so I can be somewhat on track, and recently did a personality disorder quiz for all three just to make sure that they're leaning to the appropriate traits.

The only real trouble I have is their specific styles of speech as it relates to their disorders, especially Tom and Alex. I write too much like an essayist, which is great for Erik's schizoid traits, but is sorta strange looking for Tom's borderline/histrionic traits, or Alex's narcissism. They just end up too long winded, I guess.

I haven't really decided what importance their specific disorders will have on the plot, other than Tom's histrionic outbursts get him into a shit load of trouble, and that Erik indirectly drives the plot along by poking at Tom's weak spots. I haven't found where Alex is supposed to go yet. It's more a me-venting-in-the-background-of-the-story sort of thing.

My FMC has depression and possibly is OCD as well, although I'm still debating as to whether or not I will put that in there.

Everyone in my NaNo has PTSD (some of it combat-related, which I class as a special category due to its particular resistance to treatment). You would too, the multiverse is a traumatic place. The narrator walks through a door into someone else's mind, which contains an entire universe, which, if you want to try and use the medical model, probably indicates some non-disordered aspects of the plural spectrum.

Myself, I have a sizeable chunk of PTSD symptoms, exacerbated by depressive tendencies and manifesting in spates of hypomania during high-stress periods. I also have some OCD symptoms that are probably the PTSD speaking.

Last year the main character had a total amnesia. I don't know if this is classified as a mental illness, but it opened many way for the story.

This year two of the main characters think they aren't who they are, at least they have a strong doubt. The Idea came from the "Dedale" movie (http://www.answers.com/topic/dedales), but the novel will go into another direction, with a slight scifi base.

One of the two may suffer of agoraphobia too, but I haven't decided yet.

Not this year, but in years past, I've dealt with mental illnesses in a roundabout way with my characters. I never specifically addressed what they had, but their symptoms are fairly prominent. Mostly PTSD in both cases.

One day, though, I would like to try to write a story where the main character has schizophrenia or schizoaffective. This would be very personal to me, as I have bipolar-type schizoaffective. I just haven't found a plot for this idea. :|a

I'm considering making each of my three protagonists personify the three stages of my bipolar disorder...may be interesting.

I was diagnosed with OCD about eight years ago, and I think my having it gives me some insight into what it feels like to have other thoughts and impulses that you know are irrational but can't ignore anyway. (I, for a long time, would wash my hands after simply pouring myself a glass of milk. People in high school, boys mostly, have called me stupid and told me to just stop having OCD. A lot of my friends thought it was a source of amusement and were happy to enable me.) Social and general anxiety show up a lot in my writing, as well, and I have several sociopaths, some relatively harmless and others not so much.

Also, abnormal psychology is a prominent theme in my story The Self Phenomenon, which I was going to write for last year's NaNo, but might do this year instead... or the other thing... but that's beside the point. In SP, the main characters all have some mental illness or another, accompanied by varying powers that an obscure institute is trying to research and harness. Then a member of the staff is murdered and two of the subjects go missing and supernatural hijinks ensue.

ANYWAY, I'm intrigued by mental illness and how people react to things in given situations, so I probably overthink all of my characters, and tear apart my stories looking for the psychological motivations of characters. But I'm character-obsessed, so thinking about my babies is just about the best thing in my life.

I'M STILL NOT DONE, your books sound very interesting. Is the first one available to buy?

I'm writing a dystopia novel, where one of the more important characters suffers from mental illness. I'm bipolar and have anxiety problems, and that's overall what really drove me to the dystopia genre (imperfect things that can exist in a "perfect" world). I'm really excited to pull mental illness into other characters, especially depression caused from events that occur.

I have mental illness as a theme in both my Nano plans and the other novel I've been working on. In the latter, one of the characters is an 8-year-old girl with severe depression who self-harms, but since she is never the viewpoint character, the reader doesn't realise this until late on when the other characters find out. Don't want to sound too high-faluting but part of the idea behind this is to say "you never know whether anyone around you who looks normal might be suffering on the inside". Also, the main character has claustrophobia and is forced into situations where this causes problems.

In my Nano -- this is all very shaky as I only decided to do a Nano three days ago and came up with most of this plot only today -- it's a fantasy world so story-internally it's not labelled or discussed as a mental illness, but from the reader's perspective, the princess who is one of the main characters has a learning disability; she is meant to evoke audience sympathy as she is unequipped to deal with the world she has to live in, but is still a likable, even lovable character.

My main character is a writer with schizophrenia. She hears the voices of her characters and starts seeing one of them. Eventually, it starts to cause her to lose touch with reality and she basically has to choose between having her characters be her reality, or her sanity and the real world.

I've never been diagnosed with a mental illness, but ones like this fascinate me. But it was a very random idea that hit me while I was brushing my teeth. So, yeah.

One of my main characters brothers has schizophrenia, anger and impulse control issues. He's very volatile even on his good days. And even though it's not a mental illness, he's also deaf and that causes a lot of his anger to surface. He gets really pissed if you don't look directly at him when you speak and preferably sign. He can make out basic things through lip reading. When there is a whole group of people talking at once, forget it. he freaks out because he can't follow any of it. He also get pissed when people can't understand him. Actually his schitzophrenia is the most under control mental illness he has, as long as he takes his meds. But his anger and impulse control is pretty much a daily thing even with meds. It's just not as intense, though he did put someone in the hospital for eating banana pudding in front of him but he didn't like that guy anyway and he was warned about doing that on many occassions. The mc and his mother are the only one's who can nip a fit in the bud, because they can see when it's coming and he has respect for them but once it strikes not even they can stop him.

When he's not on his meds, in a weird way, you can get a false sense of security because he's relatively calm. He will spend hours making magical potions out of household items. LIke dish soap and water is very powerful magic. One drop and it burns off the part it touches. Or he'll talk about these fantastic things. Like how Jimmy Stewart is really God and he was trying to tell us this through his movie Harvey, who is also real. He's Jesus. He seems happy and then out of nowhere he's trying to kill you.

He's only a minor character. In the screenplay he's talked about in a couple of scenes and show up once. He'll be more prominent in the novel but not as a secondary character, just a bigger minor one.

I wrote a short story from the pov of one of three voices in the mc's head. He's much different from the other mc's brother. His illness came from childhood trauma. He's basically a gentle soul and the voices are his friends. (He doesn't have MPD) The pov voice is the 'leader'. He taught the mc about survival. The other two voices serve as guidance in love and fun. The leader isn't crazy about the other two especially the one who keeps going on about love. She's always making the mc do stupid things. But the one purpose they all share is to keep thoughts about the mother away. Thoughts about the past blocked. That's when they band together.

The story itself is, the mc meets a girl that actually likes him and the pov character isn't liking that. He wants her gone but the mc tells him too bad. They see eachother often and then one days she asks about the mc's past. At first he doesn't want to tell her but then he decides to and that's when the voices band together and all yell at him at once and they don't stop. He ends up in the hospital which means the voices are blocked but they are still there. The pov character really can't stand the girl especially since she told him he had to keep the vocies gone if he wanted to be with her. (she's schizophrenic in the more classic sense and she's a bit loopy by nature but she takes her medication) the mc can't let his friends go so when he leaves the hospital he dumps the pills and the pov character talks him into killing the girl. He's at the gas station filling a can with gasoline when the love character steps in and over rides the pov character. He goes back to the hospital and when he gets out he doesn't throw away his meds and they live happily ever after-all but the pov voice.

I'm very fortunate, mild to mid level bouts of depression is the only form of mental illness I live with.

This year's NaNo is going to be a sequel of last year's. Both MCs suffer from mental disorder to some extent.

Laura is a student in the last stages of her studies who is bipolar and suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress. Laura is disordered due to multiple emotional/physical/sexual abuse in childhood. The bipolar disorder was only discovered when she hospitalized herself in a mental institution after a suicide attempt. Not to mention that due her mental problems also social life is kind of a challenge. It takes her a lot of energy to pretend to be "normal" so she's not looked weird at or even openly rejected. Many a boyfriend left her already, but funny enough it wasn't so much the mental defect itself that made them do that but learning what's behind it.

Vince is with the NYPD again after his several months long pause after his burnout in the previous novel. However, he doesn't work Special Victims any longer but is (temporary for now) assigned to Homicide. Except the burnout (that doesn't really count this year ;)), he also suffers from post-traumatic stress and regularly returning depressive episodes (no full blown depression). In his case, it's rooted in the trauma of 9/11. Then he was on duty and helped evacuated the WTC ... and watched the second plane crasing into the South Tower while still on the phone with his wife whom he tried to convince to run for her life.

In last year's NaNo both met when Vince was visiting his oldest sister who lives in Munich, Germany, with her family and one day Laura literally ran into him and showed him with a grande cappucino. After that unpleasant event they run into each other (figuratively now ;-)) at several other occasions and slowly grew closer ... close enough to keep contact first via email then also Skype.

In this year's NaNo Laura will visit Vince in New York ... and I'll see where this is going exactly from November 1 on. ;)

The Bonus Question: yes, I'm mentally ill. Guess what I suffer from. What? Yeah, right; bipolar disorder (Type II) and post-traumatic stress. Laura is mainly based on my humble Self. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to create such a messed up character. I'm not creative enough to cook someone like her up *lol*

Well, the disorders however don't play the main role. However, they run through the story like a red thread nevertheless as they to some extent influence the characters', especially Laura's, thoughts, actions and feelings.

The main character of my story (an animorphs fan-fic) develops a mental illness during the course of the story. (If you don't read Animorphs or haven't read the last book, it might not make a lot of sense.)

Basically the Andalites have been attacking the Kelbrids because they don't want to stay out of Kelbrid space, and Kelbrid numbers have dwindled to the point that they resort to taking gifted and prodigy children from their race, believing that the only way to ensure that the Andalites die is to train warriors as smart as them, and forcing them into the military, to train then to kill Andalites specifically.

The story follows a young girl (around the age of five) that was kidnapped and forced into this military camp. Prior to her kidnapping she was a musical prodigy, and she resists and refuses much of what the camp is trying to make her do, until she is forced to execute an Andalite that was rendered helpless. After that, between her guilt, the physical, and the mental abuse/brainwashing, she spirals into full-blown insanity, and by the time she "graduates" the military camp she is virtually indistinguishable from who she once was. Even her comrades see her as a crazed, dangerous murderer, but the military keeps her in because she does what she was trained to do very well. She suffers from C-PTSD.

During her career, she begins to get a little better after they send her on a mission to Earth, to be a standby in case they need to order any executions of Andalites on the planet. (Later in the plot its found that she was sent specifically to execute Visser Three, because they didn't want to take the chance that the Kelbrid Sector responsible for cleaning up the Yeerks couldn't handle taking him down.) While she is on Earth she takes her little sister with her, who she finds was also about to get kidnapped to take to the camps. This leads her to begin to get better, because she wants to give her little sister a good childhood free from the horrors she experienced (even to the point that she doesn't even tell her what Andalites are.) She lives relatively happily until she witnesses Elfangor murdering her sister. (NO FANGIRL/BOY FREAK OUTS! I promise Elfangor is still awesome, but I don't want to spoil the plot twists. =P)


After that she completely relapses, her split personalities re-appearing, she develops phobias, flash-backs, and begins suffering regularly from night terrors and hallucinations. The only thing keeping her from suicide is revenge. She becomes almost completely mentally unhinged while she seeks revenge on Elfangor...but at the last chapter of the book the only Andalite she finds is Ax, whom she is convinced knows where Elfangor is, and she won't take "he's dead" for an answer. (I have books planned to pick up after that one, but that's where this particular NaNo ends.)



As for myself, I do suffer from Mathematics disorder, but I guess that's kind of minor...as long as you aren't doing math. -_-' I also suffer from dysthymia, with bouts of double/compounded depression. However, I haven't had an episode of double depression in a long time, so I hope it stays that way. :)

I'm sticking eldritch gods into my story, so if the characters don't start with a mental illness they sure will end up with one. The antagonist/secondary character/sidekick (it's complicated...) is an undiagnosed sociopath, and knowing my penchant for driving my characters insane, everyone else will probably be written with some sort of damage.

As for the bonus, I have been diagnosed with (and am being medicated for) major depression, social anxiety, and thought disorder. Yes, they actually called it that. Basically I am constantly bombarded with visions of the dead, people dying gruesomely, disfigured and/or evil spirits, and other hellish thoughts, but rather than actual hallucinations they are restricted to "inside" my head--I don't actually see these things in the world around me, but that doesn't stop me from imagining that they might be...unseen, waiting...

My MC, Sunny (on the left in my picture), is anorexic, his brother (to the right) is a depressive. When I was first developing Sunny, I was struggling with an eating disorder and to cope I unloaded it all into my writing and over time he just seemed to develop the same problems as I had.

In the long run, though, it's probably a good thing. I've had him for three and a half years now and I've never seen a character like him. Boo to mental illnesses, yay to originality! :)

My story deals with a woman who at the age of twelve was abandoned by her bi-polar mother.

My novel this year is written from the point of view of the roommate of someone who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. So I get to play around with a whole slew of mental illnesses this year.