Update From The Lazy Writing Front: Mental Illness

Okay so everyone has their lazy moments. Everyone.

When you're a writer, sometimes those moments get published.

So today I'm going to talk about a trend I have noticed over the past couple of years in crime fiction in particular and in entertainment more broadly. And it's lazy writing at its finest.

I'm talking about fictional portrayals of mental illness.

The Cliff's Notes version: mental illness seems to be the latest in a long line of props lazy writers use as convenient plot devices.

Go ahead: ask me how I know.

Okay, just kidding. I know because I have mental illness all around me. And so do you, whether you know it or not.

The big, dark, unsurprising secret that has gone unreported down the ages, is that mental illness has always been with us, always will. It is an inescapable aspect of the human condition, just like love, happiness, reproduction, aging and eventually, death.

I was recently reminded of this fact by a series of events that occurred while I was working away at my day gig (for those of you playing at home, I teach history to teenagers). Let me repeat: I am a teacher. I manage young people and attempt to educate them for a living. And if I'm being honest, I'm pretty okay at it. 

This is because I continue to be fascinated by history and I like people. More to the point, I find teenagers fun and worth getting to know. This is in part why one of my daily mantras currently is "Gen-Z is gonna save the world." And I really believe that.

But sometimes my experience, optimism and ability run smack up against a wall. And that is exactly what happened over the past couple of weeks. In sum: I had to do my job while trying to navigate the massive distraction of a mentally ill teenager in love for the first time.

Yep. You read that right.

One kid. 

I'm no mental health professional, and I would never even think to try to diagnose someone's particular pathology. That said, this kid has been driving the Struggle Bus for most of her life, especially emotionally.

Here’s how it went down. I clued in pretty quickly that this child Had a tendency toward wild mood, swings, deep despair, giddy, highs, and tendency to always, always, always over share what was going on in her life at that very moment.

And truth be told, the conflict I found myself in with this student sort of snuck up on me. Now, bear in mind, once again, I’m a friendly person. I like my students, I like my coworkers. I like my boss. I like the parents I me. I can find something to like it just about anybody. And I also find that my job gets easier if kids/parents Realize that not only on my fun, but I care about them, I care about their successes, and to a lesser extent about their failures. I can’t get bogged down in their failures. We do our best to focus on the victories, small and large, and that seems to make all the difference in my classroom.

So the student question early on developed a habit of dropping into my classroom before school, between classes, etc. And and so doing, she would deliver a piece of art, and anecdote about what was going on with her, ask about my weekend. Pretty non-descriptive stuff. As far as the art is concerned, by the way, she’s not the only one who gives me art. I have a bulletin board full of student art in my classroom.

And then the tenor of our interactions began to change. Because this student fell in love. With a boy. Online. In another country.

And all of a sudden, all she wanted to do, was talk to me about this kid. Coupled with the fact that the student has the aforementioned mood swings, has to be constantly reminded not to eat in my class, and needs almost constant redirection to keep her focused and on task when we’re working, the above didn’t really raise many red flags with me at first.

And then one day it hit me. Kids talk to me all the time about their lives. They don’t talk to me all the time about their love lives. And while I would listen to this student with half an ear, and say things like: “Have you told your mother about this boy? Anything you’ve told me, you should’ve told your parent. Because you have to understand, anything you say to me is not confidential. If you don’t want your parents to know what’s going on with you you shouldn’t tell me. I’m not a counselor, and I’m not a therapist.”

Or, you know, words to that effect.

And then came the day that she insisted on reading a love letter from her to her boyfriend.

Aloud. To me.

And she did this over my repeated requests that she stop. Over my repeated protestations that this was not appropriate behavior. That she was putting me in a tough position, and she was making me uncomfortable.

None of this phased her. I have to admit it’s tough to surprise me anymore. Especially in my day job. I’ve seen a lot of things. I never thought I would get sexually harassed by a student. And talking about your love life in ways that make other people uncomfortable, believe it, or not, dear reader, is a form of sexual harassment.

Now, do I think this kid was trying to upset me? No. Do I think she was trying to make me uncomfortable? No. But just because she wasn’t trying to, didn’t mean that she did not do exactly that.

So, I did the smart thing. I talked to my boss about it. My boss is a great boss. She stepped in, had a conversation with the student, explained to her that I had some concerns, etc. And asked her to stop the behavior.

That worked for about a week. Then earlier this week this student had a meltdown in my classroom. Went off on me. I kept her after class to make sure she was doing OK emotionally. She’s on medication, I don’t judge, I’m not a mental health professional, but I am also responsible for my students, for their health, safety, and welfare. So we had a post class check-in.

Here’s a quick summary of that check-in: this young lady screamed at me at the top of her lungs about a variety of subjects between which she meandered back-and-forth for 22 minutes.

Twenty. Two.

And all I could do was calmly listen, calmly reiterate over and over again, that this was not acceptable behavior. And eventually, With the timely help of a couple of other staff members, she managed to calm down.

Note that I said: “She managed to calm down.” Not, “We managed to calm her down.”

Nope. There was no magic bullet. There was no special phrase, no code, no smoke signals, nothing that would calm this young lady down. She had to do it herself, and she mostly did it because she ran out of steam.

And the irony here is that for all of her focusing on me in her rant, none of this really had anything to do with me. I was simply the object on which she focused her all-out verbal assault.

In the days since this incident, I have been mulling the differences between the mental challenges this child faces and those I so often see in crime fiction.

With a lot of support, effort and some medication, this young lady manages to just get through her day. And she rarely does so unscathed. And yet I see characters in crime fiction all the time who exhibit many of these same debilitating and off-putting personality traits, and they manage to buckle down and shut out their demons and solve the case/use their own pathologies as insight into what another mentally ill person might have done while committing this crime/used their pathologies to successfully plan and pull of a crime themselves.

And it is all a bunch of bunk. I don’t intend to call out any authors by name, but here’s one hint: a budding serial killer adopted by a cop and trained by that cop to use objectively bad people as the outlet for said serial killer’s urges. 

Yuh-huh. And let me know when Elvis gets here.

That’s not how mental illness works. 

And then there’s the dementia/Alzheimer’s craze. I have seen dementia victims in crime fiction do things and say things that none of the countless people in my own family who suffered from dementia seemed capable of once they were past the initial stages of the disease.

One fictional exception that seems to really have embraced taking an unflinching look at mental illness? The first Joker movie. Joaquin Phoenix was brilliant. 

Not the second movie though. A musical adaption? 

Some things are too crazy for real life.

What about you? Experiences with mental illness that don’t jive with all these assorted crime fiction tropes? Tell us in the Comments section.

See you there!