One personal opinion of mine is that mental health isn’t written about enough in fiction. At least not accurately.

Sure, they have somebody get depressed after a breakup or after a parent dies, but that isn’t typically the focus of the story, it’s pretty much a side-plot.

After all, who would want to read about a teenager who wakes up, depressed and anxious for no reason, and lays on the couch all day? Because in truth, that’s often how depression appears in regular, every-day life, but it’s not something that is readable.

Either your reader will be bored to death and quit reading your book, they will skip that part, or they will laugh in your face.

Let’s be honest–we don’t want any of those things to happen. Right?

So how do we right good, accurate and respectful content about mental health in our fiction books?

1. Keep it accurate, avoid stereotypes. You don’t want to write about a person who has depression and make them severely depressed every single minute of the day, hate everybody in their life, suicidal, and harming themselves if you simply describe them as having depression. Unless it’s a key factor of the plot or story, then it’s simply not necessary.
2. Keep it diverse. If you are frequently integrating mental health into your various WIPs, then don’t do the same thing over and over again–this relates to the previous point. Mental health is a different experience and story for each person, so if you are writing about people who are only suicidal in each of your stories (and they are unrelated stories), then try to switch it up. I don’t say this just to keep your readers interested, but rather so that people know you don’t just qualify ‘mental health’ as the ‘more serious‘ stories.
3. Add small moments. If your character is only having huge panic attacks in public, then surprise: you’re wrong. They need to have trouble sleeping, days where they are depressed, struggles with anxiety, something ELSE aside from that one thing. For some people, it’s not all just one big problem, there’s little bits and pieces that all contribute to the main story.
4. Figure out the theme of your story. If your story isn’t revolving around the mental health theme, then you might not need that drastic of a mental health struggle. So understand the role that mental health will play in your book.
5. Understand mental health first. Research, research, research. Every story is very different, you don’t want to jump to write every story so that it’s super extreme. Like I said: everyone’s lives have small bits and pieces that contribute to the bigger story.

I was reading an article (5 Tips for Exploring Mental Health in Your Fiction) and the author of it said, “No one is just depressed or anxious. No character is the sum of their quirks and ticks.” (Lisa Williamson Rosenburg)

While this goes for people, it is essential to master in your story. Your characters need depth and they need background experiences to make them the way they are and to make their mental state and being the way it is.

I’ve seen various videos and articles saying that the Disney princesses are all based on mental illnesses and if we look at them, we can see that they do all represent (even if unintentionally) some sort of mental illness or disorder.

1. Ariel is a hoarder which is a form of OCD
2. Belle is captured and falls in love with the Beast, and this can be seen as Stockholm Syndrome
3. Anna from Frozen apparently has ADHD
4. Alice in Wonderland has (and this is no surprise) schizophrenia

These are just a few examples and I’m not here to debate whether or not your childhood is actually based on mental disorders or not. However, it is an excellent example of how we can write characters with mental illnesses in a way that’s not dark or depressing. You can give them an interesting arc and story without screaming, “#MENTALHEALTHAWARENESS.”

So those are my thoughts on writing fictional stories involving mental health. If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Thanks for reading, have a great day.
~Willow