Writing YA Characters with Emotional and Mental Disorders

You want to write an adolescent character with OCD? Or how about PTSD? Bipolar disorder, anyone? ADHD? Asperger’s Disorder?

First, keep in mind that many characters are quirky or strange but do NOT have diagnosable mental illnesses. That’s not what I’m talking about in this post. I’m talking about writing characters who, officially diagnosed or not, have a definite disorder. And if you’re interested in writing such a character …

Well, that would make sense. After all, about 20% of children and adolescents in the United States have an emotional or mental disorder.

So let’s just say that you’ve come up with an awesome premise that includes a young character with some mental or emotional disorder.

Here’s what I humbly suggest:

1. Go for individuality. If someone tells me a kid is autistic, that only gives me a tiny bit of information. It doesn’t mean I know who’s going to walk into my office. That’s because not every person with that diagnosis has the same symptoms or behaves in the exact same way. Far from it. Just because you know one person with bipolar disorder doesn’t mean you understand all people with bipolar disorder, right? One teenager may have been struggling with issues since early childhood. For another, symptoms might seem to come out of nowhere (some mental illnesses tend to emerge in late adolescence or early adulthood). Because children and adolescents with emotional and mental disorders are an incredibly diverse bunch, maybe don’t go for the obvious stereotype.

To avoid that, you can:

2. Go for depth. No matter what the diagnosis, each person IS A PERSON, right? You know, with likes, dislikes, fears, quirks, preferences, strengths, and talents? It’s the details that make them 3-D: mannerisms, speech patterns, passions, confusions, pet peeves. A good character, regardless of a diagnosis, will have all of these. And without them, all you’ve got is cardboard. Boring.

But at the same time, you might want to:

3. Go for reality. If you’re really writing a person with a disorder, there has to be impairment. Seriously—it’s not a disorder unless some aspect of daily functioning is problematic as a result. That’s what makes it A DISORDER. If you’re going to create a character who has a mental illness, he/she should struggle with it. Mental illness is not pretty, or delicate, or elegant, or convenient, or attractive. Mental and emotional disorders bring enormous costs—in lost opportunities and broken relationships, stumbles and tragedies, not to mention incredible suffering. I'm totally not saying it has to be all-painful-all-the-time, because people live and cope and thrive despite having these disorders every day. I'm just saying DON'T TRIVIALIZE IT. Use individuality to make your character sympathetic. Use talents and quirks to make the character attractive. Use strengths and resilience to help the character triumph. But don’t gloss over the illness.

To keep from doing that, perhaps you should:

4. Go for accuracy. What are the basic diagnostic criteria? Do you understand them? Do you know what they actually mean, how they actually look? Do you know much about the disorder itself? Like, for example, do you know symptoms of autism have to emerge in early childhood—they DON’T just come out of nowhere when a kid is older? If you’re in the research stage for your book, I suggest you start here or here. (I also suggest you be careful of the internet, because, man, there’s a lot of wild, unfounded information out there.) But don't just read the facts. Read a few personal stories. And of course, if you know someone with that diagnosis who's willing to give you a perspective, listen and take a lot of notes, because that will give you a lot more depth and warmth--and intensity, especially if you are talking to or writing about a teen.

Oh, and if you happen to have the diagnosis yourself, I STILL suggest you get other perspectives and information so you don't base the character solely on yourself. Writing a character who is a thinly veiled version of you can be a trap--what's it going to feel like if one of your betas says your MC is unsympathetic? It's gonna feel personal, yeah? So be careful with that (and that goes for every character, not just ones with mental illnesses). Anyway, I think you need both the personal angle AND the factual information if you're going to write a character with a mental illness. You know, so you don’t call a psychopath psychotic, or the other way around?

And even if you're spot-on in your portrayal of symptoms and all that, you can still:

5. Go for perspective. Just because your character has a mental illness, that doesn’t mean you have an issue book (unless you want to). It doesn’t mean that your book is about mental illness. Your book is about a character (and probably more than one), right? The mental illness does not define that character. It’s just one of the many, many things about the character that makes him/her someone we want to root for (unless it’s the villain, but we’ll save that for another post).

I'd love to hear if you're writing a character who happens to have a mental illness, and how you've approached that!