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    Evelyn replied to the topic Mental Illness/Disorders In Christian Fiction in the forum General Writing Discussions 6 years, 7 months ago

    @eden-anderson Oh ear this is close to home.

    Well it looks like a lot of over people have type up their rants. Good job all you for taking that time and energy. XD

    And while I’m not super familiar with PTSD, I have had a ton of hands on experiance with mental illness for the past couple years. So here we go. 😛

    I can’t say I have read many books that portrayed mental illnesses and in a way I’m scared to even know what Christian novels have to say about it. When my family was going through a rocky time because of a sudden and extreme case of mental illness it was really painful when old friends would come and pull us aside and tell us what is happening is happening because of my parent’s lack of faith and that we need to believe better for her to heal and so on and so forth.

    Not to make any enemies, in fact if anyone around here knows me they’ll know I hate “Christian Fiction” because it is usually so sterilized and stiff and rubs me in all the wrong places (like for starters that chunk that ends the book on the conversation. Please. Just don’t.)

    Like @sarah-inkdragon said:

    What’s more, “clean” Christian fiction often just entirely ignores that mental issues exist in the first place. Depression is swept under the rug because we often think it’s is just a teenager’s problem, PTSD is put away because “if we trust in God” our life apparently become just fine no matter the horrors we’ve faced. 

    I am going to respectively disagree with you though on

    And yes, in their very base form, mental illnesses are excuses

    Maybe you didn’t mean it quite how that sounds and I’m really curious what you meant by that. 🙂

    Anyways, I for one would not trust someone to write about mental illness unless they have had lots of research and preferably experiance and I feel like that would show through in the story in whether it rings true or not.

    The thing about (explicit and ‘clean’) Christian Fiction (for me, and again, not to offend anyone) is I wouldn’t trust 99% them to portray mental illness in its most raw and realistic state, and even if they do, the likelyhood of them tacking on some one-liner statement or shallow theology with it is high, (and same to you Christian movies 😛 ) and mental illness is really very complicated (another reason one should reasearch the area a lot)

    The topic of depression as a mental illness I can not speak for. Its a real thing sometimes, but even then it confuses me and sometimes I wonder if there are people that use it as excuses in certain circumstances (just like people will use the excuse of introvert to opt out of mission/community/church work because “oh I’m an introvert.)

    Just like anything else mental illness is real but can be twisted in so many wrong, wrong ways.

    And I better run before I step on any more toes. XD

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