Literature often portrays mental illness in fascinating ways.
Literature provides a great wealth of characters that illusrate mental illness in interesting and unique ways. Though authors may not always have a particular mental illness in mind when creating a character, they often carve out symptoms that match various diagnostic criteria. Using the DSM-IV-TR, the diagnostic manual used by psychologists and psychiatrists, you can take a look at how characters throughout literary history have portrayed some diagnoses in the major categories of mental illness.
Depressive Disorders
Major Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that in any 2-week period, 5.4% of Americans 12 years of age and older experience some type of depression. According to the DSM-IV-TR, major depression occurs when a set of symptoms including, but not limited to, hopelessness, helplessness and chronic sadness have been present every day for more than two weeks. When looking at depression and literature, you can find many examples of depressed characters. One clear example lies in the character Daisy from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby." Daisy seems to live her life in a state of helplessness; she rarely makes decisions on her own and seems trapped under the oppressive view of women in the 1920s. This is illustrated by her thoughts of her infant daughter when she says, "All right...I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Such a statement reveals the sense of sadness and lack of self-efficacy that underlies the character of Daisy throughout the novel.
Psychotic Disorders
Psychotic disorders represent another major category of mental illness. Psychotic disorders include schizophrenia, as well as less common psychoses such as delusional disorder and brief psychotic disorder. According to the DSM-IV-TR, psychosis occurs when visual or auditory hallucinations are present. Additionally, thinking often becomes nonsensical and disorganized. Mood changes often include apathy and a desire to withdraw from society. Throughout literature, quite a few characters have exhibited such traits. Shakespeare's characters, in particular, tend to have a loose relationship with reality. In Shakespeare's tragedy, "Hamlet," the main character is plagued with delusions, visual hallucinations and paranoia. At one point he converses with the ghost that seems to follow him throughout the play, saying, "The spirit I have seen may be the devil, and the devil hath power...out of my weakness and melancholy as he is very potent with spirits, abuses to damn me." Hamlet's rant is an example of somewhat illogical interaction with an aberration and suggests, at best, a tenuous hold on reality, as is seen in patients with psychosis.
Personality Disorders
Personality Disorders represent another area of mental illness that describes the way a person exists in his world. According to the DSM-IV-TR, personality disorders are, "An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture. This pattern is manifested in two (or more) of the following areas: (1) cognition (i.e., ways of perceiving and interpreting self, other people, and events), (2) affectivity (i.e., the range, intensity, lability, and appropriateness of emotional response), (3) interpersonal functioning, and (4) impulse control." Personality-disordered characters are rampant in literature. An interesting, and entertaining, example lies in Scarlett O'Hara from Margaret Mitchell's novel, "Gone with the Wind." Scarlett embodies a personality disorder in that she is histrionic, selfish and lacks insight to her own behavior. Scarlett shows this in the way she hurts the men and women around her in order to serve her own needs.
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