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Mental Disorder and Disease



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Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:36 pm
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zaminami says...



Recently -- as in, today -- I found springhole.net, which has the amazing article that is linked above about mental disorder. I found an ad to the website on a character creator and clicked on it by accident, discovering and learning about various things about mental disorders.

If any of you haven't read Crystal Clear: Prologue, stop reading right now and read it. It'll clear up plenty when I talk about this. If you did, keep reading. Or read the prologue again, I don't care.

Most of what was in the article I had already known, such as that psychosis is not, in fact, psychopathy and how people never snap after one event and have based that on Crystal's character. However, the one part of the article caught my eye (I'm just going through these stereotypes one at a time to talk about them individually):

Things that need to be avoided:

The pretty little "mad" waif. You know, the characters who sit around in pretty frilly dresses, sip tea (or blood), and make pretty little babble at people (or stuffed animals). These characters inevitably make mental illness look pretty and romantic.


In the beginning of the book (i.e., C.1, C.2, basically until she leaves America) I am writing how there's a bit of something off about her. She, at the age on nine, talks to thin air and to her stuffed animals to give foreshadowing to the ending. However, this doesn't occur throughout the entire book, so I think that I'm okay in that department, but I'm not sure.

The perfect innocent who snaps, goes "insane," and goes on a murder rampage. This is bollocks. Plus, it reinforces the misconception that mental illness or insanity automatically means violent behavior.


There is no nice way to say this: Crystal literally murders everyone in the world at the end of the book (and technically the beginning prologue). However, she is far from a perfect innocent. I inserted so many stressful, traumatic, and downright messed up situations in the outline and what will be the book it's not even funny (well, it wasn't funny in the first place, but still). These events lead her to snap from everything that has pressed on her. She also isn't too violent with anyone except for the things that she is prophecied to destroy. So I don't think that it's too bad, but I need to keep the ending or at least have her commit mass genocide somewhat... which leads me to the next part:

Characters who do bad things simply because they're mentally ill. Mental illness isn't a magic switch that flips a person's morality topsy-turvy or turns it off entirely. While mental illness can, in some cases, contribute to a person's harmful or destructive behaviors, there is still always an underlying motivation behind the person's actions...

Anything that implies that being "insane" is someting that people do simply to be irritating, difficult, different, or rebellious. Because it's not. It's the result of a mental illness. It's not something that one can simply up and decide to be or not to be.


I agree with this 100%. Which is also why her personality is quirky, sarcastic, and slightly dark. In violent situations, she tries to get away (when it's a mortal) or kills/maims it (if it's a supernatural creature that presents a problem to society). So if she gets cornered in an ally by muggers, she'll disarm them, maybe knock them down if needed, and get the Flowey out of there. Another thing she'll do is make small talk with them and twist the conversation around until the muggers get so confused that she can slip past them. If she's in an argument, she uses her observations and wits to win. Most of her comments are sarcastic or with an underlying tone of sarcasm, as you'll know if you've roleplayed with me, or something nerdy in general. And whenever she does do something bad, she has a very good reason (i.e., breaking a law to catch a criminal not unlike Batman or fighting someone but they antagonized her first). It's never because of her insanity. Now, she is psychopathic, but they only contribute here and there -- the fact that she doesn't care about others, she never feels guilt, that she doesn't have any empathy towards anything, small things like that -- and of course, at the end.

Characters whose coolness, [etc.] is supposed to derive from their "insanity." This is a form of romanticizing mental illness...

Characters for whom being "insane" or "crazy" is pretty much all the character is about. People with mental illnesses are people with hopes, dreams, [etc.]
Characters who are supposed to have severe mental issues need to be three-dimensional people as much as any other type of character does.


Crystal is the main character. We all know that. I don't think that I do this, but then again I've never learned how to avoid it. This is the category that I really need help on.

Okay, I think that is it... if you got this far, great job. This took me about thirty minutes to write, haha. I guess what I am asking in my own long-winded way is how I can avoid these stereotypes but make Crystal seem like she is in my head and how to insert psychopathy in the book? I guess I better write Chap. 1 now. G-bye!

Spoiler! :
@Flumadiddle @WhosabellCanWrite @Saruka @MJTucker

-- tagged you guys because either a) you told me to tag you or b) you roleplay/hear me talk about Crystal on a daily basis
Last edited by zaminami on Sat Jan 27, 2018 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sat Dec 23, 2017 4:34 am
Rosendorn says...



So... if you're worried about being respectful, you have missed the mark by having a violent, abused, genocidal psychopath.

1- Psychopathy actually isn't an official diagnosis.

It's a pop-science/forensics label that people, more often than not, use to separate out violent and abusive people from "normal" people, usually involving some turn of the phrase "only a psychopath/sociopath could do that."

People who commit mass acts of violence are indistinguishable from you and me. It's not a mental illness. It's a belief of superiority. You can have a perfectly sane person who believes a certain group of people should die out. Some of them have enough drive to commit the violence required to have them die out.

It also has "milder" versions of abusing those around them, but the point remains: people want abusers and murderers to be mentally ill, because they don't want to face the discomfort that somebody like them could be a murderer or abuser.

2- The mentally ill are more likely to be victims of abuse, not abusers

70% of women and 30% of men with intellectual disabilities are also victims of sexual abuse. Some of the worst mass acts of violence have been against disabled people. There is an international day of mourning for those with disabilities who've been killed, usually by caretakers, and the caretakers more often than not get away with probation.

3- Lack of empathy and trauma doesn't guarantee you're going to murder people

You can read this to see how antisocial personality disorder can manifest. A lot of people with antisocial personality disorder are well adjusted individuals who try to get the control they crave by having others love them.

Trauma victims are often angry, sure, but they're very unlikely to be abusers from trauma. People with traumatic pasts might claim their abuse made them that way, but as somebody who has personally been dealt an extremely terrible hand and has had people wonder how I'm not a murderer, it's simply a matter of choice. Spinning it as her being traumatized, therefore her killing is justified, is going to hugely increase stigma towards trauma victims.

If you have a little more about the direction of the story, I can provide more advice. But having read the prologue, and having read what you're worried about, you're definitely at risk for disrespect here.
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Sat Dec 23, 2017 5:28 am
Mea says...



I think a lot of it depends on why she finally snaps. I know you said it's everything, psychosis-related and non-psychosis-related, that piles on her, but what's the last straw? It's probably a good idea to have it be a betrayal or something non-psychosis-related. Also, her becoming more violent throughout the book (like in your example of the muggers, at the beginning she would talk her way out of it, while halfway through she would stab them non-lethally) would further distance her from the stereotype of mentally ill people suddenly snapping.

Since this sounds like it's straying into horror, I'd also highly recommend the book I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells for a good portrayal of a MC with sociopathy who's trying not to let it rule his life. It highlights things like the lack of empathy and guilt really well. (Be warned, it is quite disturbing at times.)
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Sat Dec 23, 2017 12:48 pm
BookishBrook says...



Mental illnesses are very complex things and for some people that does mean that tey will do dreadful things because of something that their disorder is telling them.
Although I bearly know about the science of these things a boy I know was recently institutionalised for anorexia. A group of us went to visit him and in the middle of a hallway was this girl who grabbed my friend and told her she was sorry for killing these people. This guy told us that she was convinced that she was a murderer even though she had never killed anyone in her life. (Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent.)
What I meant to say is that mental illnesses are really touchy subjects and should always be treated with care.

In terms of this character, breakdowns of that horrific kind sometimes do happen but, just treading carefully might be a good idea.

As someone who has come out the other end of depression, a lot of people expect us to be like this character. Mental illnesses and issues aren't covered well by writers and I think that it might be a good idea to speak to someone who has been through it about this story.

Also, "crazy" "mental" and "insane" are definitely viewed as derogatory terms by some. Using them to describe a mentally ill person is probably best avoided.

Thank you.
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Sat Dec 23, 2017 2:29 pm
zaminami says...



Thank you everyone! This really helped. I will definitely keep those things in mind
tartaglia, they/he lesbian.
i also go by skylar and reginald!
First member of the bio trio™.
victim of the writer’s block disease
  








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