Mental health conditions are far too often either vilified or romanticized in popular media. The characters with mental health conditions are either the crazed, bloodthirsty villain, or they’re cured through the power of love.
In fact, I just used the term “mental health condition” instead of “mental illness” because the latter term is so stigmatized. If someone calls a person “mentally ill,” they’re often insinuating the person’s unstable, odd, and irrational. This term’s stigma is just one of many results of all the bad representation and press people with mental health conditions get.
If you’re reading this article, I’m assuming you want to help fix that. You want to write characters with mental health conditions in an accurate, respectful manner. Thank you for that! We need more writers like you in the world.
Here are five general mental health condition stereotypes in fiction, why they’re harmful, and what to write instead:
1. People with Mental Health Conditions Are Violent
What it is: Exactly what it sounds like. The characters with mental health conditions in a story are violent toward others, and are oftentimes a major villain or antagonist. Their mental health condition, oftentimes something like schizophrenia rather than depression or anxiety, is the reason for their violence.
Why it’s harmful: This propagates the myth that people with mental health conditions are more likely to be violent, when in fact, they are much more likely to be the victims of violence. The popularization of this trope has caused people, including the police, to view those with mental health conditions as dangerous, which sometimes results in their mistreatment or even death.
What to do instead: The easiest way to avoid this trope is to not have your villains or other violent, bad characters have mental health conditions. If you still want them to, make sure their motivation for their actions isn’t their mental health condition, but something like greed or vengeance. I’d even make one of your good characters have a mental health condition as well.
2. The Mental Health Condition Is the Person’s Fault
What it is: This is exactly what it says—when the mental health condition is portrayed in the story as the character’s fault. It’s a moral failing, and any expression of their symptoms—such as a person with anxiety being too anxious to go to their friend’s party—is wrong, a character flaw, something that needs to be repented of.
Why it’s harmful: Mental health conditions are caused by a variety of factors, but none of them are that you’re a bad person. This trope propagates the harmful narrative that having a mental health condition and the according symptoms is morally wrong. It can make people treat those with mental health conditions as if they can just “get over it” through simple determination and exercise and that their symptoms are their fault. In other words, it can make people like parents and teachers punish those under them for their mental health conditions.
What to do instead: Portray mental health conditions as a struggle, an obstacle, instead of a flaw. In other words, their mental health condition will be a challenge that has no bearing on their morality. It’s like a girl working on a particularly challenging homework assignment that causes a lot of stress and crying. It’s difficult, a struggle, but not the character’s fault—the girl didn’t choose the homework!
Your character can totally make progress on managing and diminishing their mental health condition. This won’t make them a better person, but one who simply enjoys life more fully.
3. People with Mental Health Conditions Look Different
What it is: This is when you can tell the character has a mental health condition because they just look… off. Unusual. For example, a character with schizophrenia having “crazy eyes.”
Why it’s harmful: This trope “others” people with mental health conditions, making them seem distinctly different from people without them, rather than promoting unity and acceptance. It can make people with mental health conditions seem “insane” and unstable. Besides, this trope isn’t realistic; you often can’t tell who does and doesn’t have a mental health condition in real life.
What to do instead: Simply don’t make your characters with mental health conditions visibly different from the others. Realistically, in the majority of cases, readers shouldn’t even be able to tell a character has a mental illness without getting into their point of view or being told about their struggles, whether the specific condition or just the symptoms, by someone. Mental health conditions are just that invisible from the outside. Try to think of someone you know with a mental health condition and how you found out about it.
4. Mental Health Conditions Are Beneficial
What it is: This is when a mental health condition is portrayed as a “strength” of the character. For example, a person’s OCD giving them a strong attention to detail, or a person’s anxiety making them able to anticipate threats other characters can’t.
Why it’s harmful: This trope is not only again untrue, but it trivializes mental health conditions. But they cause torment, not make people stronger. I have anxiety and OCD, and never in my life has either of those conditions benefited me in some way. This trope, however, glosses over how challenging and distressing these conditions can be, and can make real people not help or be understanding with those with mental health conditions enough.
What to do instead: Give your character strengths based on something other than a mental health condition, like training or other life experiences. Make sure their condition is more of a challenge instead.
5. The Mental Health Condition Is Cured by Love
What it is: This is when a character is cured of their mental health condition by acquiring a caring, doting partner they cherish. Loving someone and being loved makes their depression, anxiety, or other conditions go away.
Why it’s harmful: This trope really romanticizes mental health conditions, and propagates an untrue message. Having a loving partner doesn’t make someone magically become not depressed or anxious anymore. A good partner can help you down the right path, by encouraging you to go to therapy or being a loving presence when you need support, but they can’t cure the mental health condition for you. You have to take steps to do that yourself.
Working through a mental health condition is hard, hard work, and should be portrayed respectfully. Mental health conditions aren’t cute or romantic, and should not be portrayed in a way that will cause people to not treat those with them with the seriousness and respect they deserve.
What to do instead: Don’t make your character become cured of their mental health condition simply because they gain a partner and love. Perhaps the partner can help them along their journey such as through the ways I described above, but ultimately, the person who has to put in the work to get better is them.
It all comes back to the same two topics: vilifying mental health conditions, or romanticizing them. One makes out people with mental health conditions to be violent, evil, or otherwise immoral, while the other trivializes their challenges. Neither are good or helpful portrayals.
Avoiding these tropes and doing your research, however, can push good, accurate narratives back into the world, improving people’s treatment of those with such conditions. You can show that people with mental health conditions are people just like everyone else, but their conditions are challenging and worthy of support.
This change starts with you.
If you would like to know more about writing characters with mental health conditions, here is an article about harmful disability stereotypes and how to avoid them. Mental health conditions are disabilities, after all.
Also, I offer sensitivity reading services for conditions such as anxiety, OCD, and general disability/mental health conditions, so you can make sure you have beneficial, accurate portrayals of them. Click here to find out more!
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