Why I Write About Mental Health
I’ve been personally affected by mental health struggles throughout my own life, and I’ve walked with others going through mental health journeys as well. Most of us have. So why not talk about it?
Mental health plays a crucial role in so many meaningful stories, and as someone personally affected by mental health struggles throughout my life, it’s important to me that my work reflect those realities as well.
Why It’s Important
While I primarily write for those directly affected, I cannot deny that writing about mental health is also a call for empathy from larger society. It's an acknowledgment that each person's journey is unique, and mental health challenges deserve to be approached with compassion and understanding. Through my stories, I hope to bridge the empathy gap and invite readers to step into the shoes of characters grappling with mental health issues. Literature has the power to foster understanding, and writing about mental health allows readers to gain insights into the lived experiences of individuals facing these challenges. It's an opportunity to educate, encourage conversations, and build pathways for understanding between those directly impacted and those seeking to offer support. When we’ve seen something before, even in a storyline in a book, it primes us to be able to identify and better understand that thing in our real lives as well.
Stigma often shrouds conversations about mental health. I mentioned this in a previous post about why I write disabled characters, and my motivation and desires are similar here. By shedding light on these issues through story, I aim to contribute to destigmatizing mental health challenges. Open dialogue and honest portrayals in literature can challenge misconceptions, ideally encouraging a more inclusive and accepting societal mindset. As of now, none of my stories beat you over the head with any of this, but if I can write a scene where my main characters attend a grief support group, or they’re talking about therapy, or they’re helping a loved one through a panic attack or PTSD flashback, I think that’s a good thing. We should be able to write and read about mental health openly and freely, as so many of us live with these issues daily or know someone who does.
Mental health affects individuals across diverse backgrounds, yet representation in literature has been limited. Through my writing, I seek to provide representation for those who may see themselves reflected in characters dealing with mental health issues. It's about acknowledging that these experiences exist, are valid, and are part of the broader human experience. Writing about mental health (or anything else for that matter) is often an exploration of personal experiences and that’s certainly true for me. As a writer, I draw from my own journey and of those close to me. I don’t pretend to know everything, even about the mental health conditions I’ve lived with personally or studied over the years, but I hope that by including my own lived experience in my characters’ stories, it will ring true and connect with the readers it’s meant to reach.
Writing about mental health is also a form of advocacy. It's a call to action for increased awareness, resources, and support systems. Through narratives that resonate emotionally, I hope to contribute to a collective effort to prioritize mental health on personal, societal, and policy levels. Mental health challenges often involve navigating emotions and thoughts that are difficult to express. Writing becomes a medium for expressing the inexpressible, offering a language for the very complex experience of mental illness and healing. It’s always been an outlet in my life, sometimes revealing more to me than my conscious awareness would previously allow, and by using my voice, hopefully others will feel emboldened to live more openly and express themselves more freely as well. Sometimes that’s all it takes to shift the world and how it looks at these things.
If we want to change things, we have to do something. For me, it’s this. Writing about mental health encourages conversations that may have been previously silenced or overlooked. It's about creating spaces where individuals feel safe to share their stories, seek help, and contribute to a broader discourse on mental health, and sometimes the easiest way to create those spaces is by introducing these concepts in a nonconfrontational way: fiction. We eliminate a good deal of defensiveness and judgment simply by framing it within a made-up story with made-up characters. This distance allows us to actually be able to talk about it, often in new and progressive ways.
Writing about mental health is a conscious effort I’m making to put our real lives onto the page, guided by the belief that literature can be a powerful tool for healing, understanding, and advocacy. Through each story, I invite readers to join me in deepening our understanding of mental health with empathy, open hearts, and compassion. We deserve to be seen and heard in all spaces within society.
Happy reading and conversations!
