This is a great point; I’ll add it to the list of clichés to avoid!

100% agree–most mental illnesses will never be overcome, they are lifelong, just as having a missing limb or having other illness is. But overcoming a wound in fiction means either moving past it or subduing it so that it doesn’t control one to a unhealthy degree, and that’s our drive here–to show writers general ideas on how to help the character put supports in place so they can learn to cope with their illness rather than have it control them and limit their happiness more than necessary with a condition. And thank you for that link. Definitely researching the disorder is so very important, because all disorders just can’t be covered adequately in one simple post like this. Our post here (like all our entries for every topic we write) is merely a jumping off point for writers. 🙂

Hell, it’s important not to fall into the trope of Curing Long Term Mental Illness.

Someone with Bipolar Disorder or schizophrenia is not “cured” by finding the right medication, though they may have improvement in their daily life. They’re still schizophrenic. The goal shouldn’t be “normalcy”, though this may be a lesson your character needs to learn. The goal should be “better than yesterday,” in a lot of cases, but it may take time for your character to come to terms with that as a goal.

There are a lot of good resources for writing these characters well, but first and foremost I’d recommend my good friend ScriptShrink on Tumblr: http://scriptshrink.tumblr.com , who’s an excellent resource for those looking to write characters with mental illness.

And overall, please, pretty please, research the disorder you’re considering giving your character FIRST. Read stories from patients with that disease–it’s as easy as a Google search.

Write these characters with respect, because real people live in the real world with these conditions, and we owe it to them as writers to respect their lives and the hardships they’ve faced.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty