How to Write About Mental Health Archives

How to Write About Fibromyalgia

by Kristina Adams | Feb 5, 2019 | Writing | 0 |

Fibromyalgia was first discovered in 1990. It’s the same age as me. I wasn’t officially diagnosed...

How Your Mental Health Can Affect Your Productivity Levels (And What to do About it)

by Alexa Whitewolf | Jan 15, 2019 | Productivity | 2 |

Mental health is always a hard topic. We think it’s getting easier, but I see it more as a one...

How to Write High-Functioning Autism

by Sarah Hindmarsh | Nov 13, 2018 | Writing | 5 |

There are many different kinds of autistic spectrum disorder. People may classically think of...

How to Write Postnatal Depression

by Alexa Whitewolf | May 24, 2018 | Writing | 0 |

The image one has of a woman becoming a mother is always maternal, sweet…like once she gives birth, everything falls into place.

Sadly, it’s also an image predominant in the rare romance novels where the author goes beyond the happily ever after and shows the characters living life to their fullest.
Reality is different, and raw, and sometimes painful. Not every woman gives birth and becomes the perfect mother. That is a myth, and it does more harm than good in the long run.
There is nothing wrong with holding a baby in your arms for the first time, and feeling a void. Of not immediately liking the little bundle of joy everyone says is the new reason for your being alive. Of thinking you’re a bad parent, and you need to stay away…
This is called postnatal or postpartum depression.

How to Write PTSD

by Kristina Adams | May 17, 2018 | Writing | 2 |

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was first discovered during WWI. Back then, it was called ‘shell shock’, ‘war neurosis’ or ‘combat stress’.

It primarily affected officers, who were forced to suppress their emotions to set a good example for their men.

We still tend to associate PTSD with soldiers and veterans, but it spans much wider than that.

How to Write Schizophrenia

by Kristina Adams | Mar 29, 2018 | Writing | 3 |

When we think of schizophrenia, we often imagine serial killers motivated by the voices in their...

How to Write About Stress

by Kristina Adams | Jul 27, 2017 | Creativity, Writing | 0 |

In the words of Bartok from Anastasia, ‘Stress. It’s a killer.’

Short-term stress can help us to achieve our goals and is the reason many of us work well under pressure.

Long-term stress, meanwhile, can affect our physical and mental health temporarily and permanently.

Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

How to Write About ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

by Kristina Adams | Jul 13, 2017 | Creativity, Writing | 3 |

Remember that kid in class that could never sit still and was forever getting told off?

Some kids were forever in detention because they just wouldn’t do what they were told.

Some got off (seemingly lightly) because they’d been diagnosed with ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

How to Write Anxiety

by Kristina Adams | Jun 29, 2017 | Creativity, Writing | 1 |

Anxiety is a cruel creature that can take over your life without you even realising it.

It can control everything from our day-to-day decisions to our career paths to our relationship choices.

And if we don’t know we suffer from it, it’s impossible to control.

How to Write About Grief

by Kristina Adams | Mar 23, 2017 | Fiction, Writing | 5 |

According to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. How long it takes to go through these stages—and how long each stage lasts—varies from person to person.

Whether your reader has experienced the death of a loved one or not, they should still be able to empathise with your character after their loss. The deeper you can get into how your character feels about the loss, the more of a connection it will create.