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For resources on writing characters with a mental illness, Blame it on the Brain and Counseling the Hard Cases are both about understanding and treating mental illness with a Christian mindset. It’s was interesting to see issues that I thought were purely medical that could be treated through counseling. (Although to be clear, both books encourage people to see the doctor and follow the doctor’s instructions. They were not anti-medicine and did not think that counseling should replace the advice of a healthcare professional.)

I think we definitely could use more representation in fiction, especially in fantasy, ’cause I don’t see a lot of it there. There also is the issue of autism (which I don’t think is a “mental disorder” but seems relevant. Tagging @ncstokes and @dekreel because I know they have thoughts about it.)

I once saw a video (Overly Sarcastic Productions: Robots) pointing out that androids in sci-fi were often portrayed as “human but less”. The way they showed the human-but-less-ness was features like not understanding body language, a tendency to take things literally and not understand sayings and metaphors, and no sense of humor. All of those are things that are hard for people on the spectrum, and the only representation they get of people like them are in the human-but-less androids.