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@eden-anderson

I’m going to speak from a very personal perspective on this, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt and try to filter out my own bias before taking my word as a correct assumption. This is merely my opinion, and it’s highly opinionated. So just be aware of that.

I don’t think we handle it well. Not at all.

Why? For one, mental illnesses are very complex and hard to understand. What’s more, just because something works one way for one person, doesn’t mean it can be generalized. You cannot make a general hypothesis and expect to be able to prove it to be 100% correct, no matter how few variables you take into account. Everyone’s lives are different, and everyone’s reaction to different things are unique. I will not react the same way you do, and you will not react the same way as another person.

Now, do I think it’s important that we correctly portray mental illnesses? Absolutely. It’s highly prominent in our society today and will probably only grow more prominent, and how do you expect to get people to relate to what you are saying if you can’t even understand it yourself? People incorrectly portray things like depression and anxiety(the big two, I know) all the time, and it doesn’t do any good. Merely mentioning an illness or giving a character an illness does not count as portraying an illness–you are simply telling us that the cancer patient is indeed sick, not what their symptoms are.

As for what we’ve done poorly–a lot, to be honest. As Christians, we tend to lean towards “clean” fiction, which ends up being the moral equivalence of choosing between eating a cookie and saving someone’s life. It’s not intriguing, it’s not challenging, and we aren’t setting an example by it. We aren’t even showing people what that world could be like, we just setting up a perfect character who has minimal struggles and can’t accomplish anything on their own. (I’m not saying we shouldn’t rely on God to help us get through struggles and that we should try to accomplish everything ourselves–but by human nature we don’t just submit or trust God like that. It’s a struggle. And also, how can we expect God to help us if we don’t want help? Accomplishing things and taking the glory for ourselves are two different things entirely.) Why this fiction doesn’t work is because it’s not human–writing, like any other art, is very subjective. To inspire emotions in a reader or consumer, you must be able to relate to them somehow. No one can relate to a perfect character who has no worldy problems whatsoever. 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.

My point is that we don’t write what we don’t understand or aren’t comfortable with. We also don’t write what we don’t think is worth writing about. I know a lot of people who completely disregard depression as an actual thing, and think PTSD is something that is entirely left to soldiers. We see the bad side of things, the people who make false claims to cover up the real problems they have, and in doing so we see mental illnesses as a “fad” or stupid problem that people make up as excuses. And yes, in their very base form, mental illnesses are excuses in some way or another. But they’re still problems other than that, and it’s not always as simple as we think. Like I said, you can’t generalize something that is entirely subjective in it’s very nature.

Our writing must be human–which comes with all the flaws and problems. This doesn’t make our humanity right, but it makes our portrayal of ourselves right. You cannot write a character with depression without selfishness, and you can’t write a person with PTSD without distrust. We are not noble or good enough to be humble enough to fall into the depression that people think of when they think depression, nor are we brave enough to overcome PTSD without first gaining some trust in God.

I’d love to see more novels with mental illnesses in them, to be honest. It’s not a topic that needs to be glorified, but it is a topic that needs broken down and critically analyzed through writing. Personally, I can relate to character with issues like this so much easier than other character because I understand the mindset. You can tell a much more inspiring story if the reader actually understands what the character is going through and is asking the same questions.

Anyhow. I’m going to leave it at this for tonight, because it’s nearly midnight and I can’t think anymore. If I said anything odd, it’s probably the last hours of the night shining through. XD I’ll be back tomorrow to clear up anything I said that’s making y’all cringe from the grammar or spelling. 😉