My characters don't really have mental illnesses per se. They have things that happened to them and ways they reacted to those things that if transported into modern reality would more than likely have them diagnosed and in therapy.
If I were trying to portray a particular set of symptoms for... some reason? (Why would I do that? To teach people what it's like? To be more authentic to some real world situation?) Then I'd be honor-bound to do the research?
As it is, what I'm actually doing is thinking 'how would this person with these experiences and these values and ideals react to this situation'? And the resulting answer is highly unstable. I'm not really interested in what the DSM has to say about that result, what it categorizes as, or how to treat it, unless it happens that the character ends up wanting a diagnosis for some reason? Should they be seeking out an Eorzean psychiatrist? That's not likely.
When I played with amnesia, there wasn't anything real-world about it. It was a magic side effect of magic things that happened. How it happened to the character was a fictional construct. How the character reacted to it was a fictional construct. Yes, it sucked for him. No, I wasn't interested in how real people in reality react to or live with amnesia. It was all about the trope and unashamedly so. I was only interested in how he reacted to and lived with the memories he did or didn't have.
Maybe if I was working with some difference the character was born with and had to grow up with, I'd want to know a bit more about other people, real and otherwise, who grow up with similar issues. But since I'm inducing fake reactions to fake circumstances, I'm okay with having thoroughly fake results that someone else might point to a psychology textbook and say "they wouldn't do that" and I just shrug and say "well, that's what they did".
If I were trying to portray a particular set of symptoms for... some reason? (Why would I do that? To teach people what it's like? To be more authentic to some real world situation?) Then I'd be honor-bound to do the research?
As it is, what I'm actually doing is thinking 'how would this person with these experiences and these values and ideals react to this situation'? And the resulting answer is highly unstable. I'm not really interested in what the DSM has to say about that result, what it categorizes as, or how to treat it, unless it happens that the character ends up wanting a diagnosis for some reason? Should they be seeking out an Eorzean psychiatrist? That's not likely.
When I played with amnesia, there wasn't anything real-world about it. It was a magic side effect of magic things that happened. How it happened to the character was a fictional construct. How the character reacted to it was a fictional construct. Yes, it sucked for him. No, I wasn't interested in how real people in reality react to or live with amnesia. It was all about the trope and unashamedly so. I was only interested in how he reacted to and lived with the memories he did or didn't have.
Maybe if I was working with some difference the character was born with and had to grow up with, I'd want to know a bit more about other people, real and otherwise, who grow up with similar issues. But since I'm inducing fake reactions to fake circumstances, I'm okay with having thoroughly fake results that someone else might point to a psychology textbook and say "they wouldn't do that" and I just shrug and say "well, that's what they did".
![[Image: g9ASfFg.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/g9ASfFg.jpg)
