Hi I had the question about the apocalypse where the vaccine causes schizophrenia. Would it make sense if the MC found a blue print of some sort that helped her make the meds she needed? Like a list of ingredients and then directions. Or would it make more sense to find someone who's kept a lab going through the apocalypse to help her, like a researcher or scientist.
Having your character find a still-functioning laboratory with a chemist would be a great idea! I think that’s the ideal solution. @scriptchemist should be able to get you further information about what you’d need!
Protip: any medical thriller with the premise “what if life-saving technology is actually baaaaad” should not be written. Especially if the “baaaaad” is just something that’s survivable everyday life for hundreds of thousands of people and not, like, an organ harvesting scheme or something.
A mass outbreak of schizophrenia wouldn’t cause the apocalypse. There might be a few months of unrest before someone figures out what’s happening and (hopefully) emergency services starts distributing meds. The parties responsible would be sued out of existence, so even in the US there’s a decent chance most of the affected would be able to afford care long term. It might even push this shitty country to finally get single payer healthcare the way pretty much every country we’re willing to be seen with has for decades, or to regulate the pharmaceutical companies so they stop inflating medicine prices.
And RE: some tags I’ve been getting, this blog is run by a neurodiverse person who consults with 20-odd other neurodiverse people in order to help people portray mental illness accurately in writing.
[Edited because I realized it wasn’t @periegesisvoid ‘s tags I was responding to, it was @z-brooke ]
I understand the basic reasoning behind content warnings but I find myself disagreeing with the necessity for them, particularly in published material, for a couple reasons. Firstly, most books are classified by a genre and target audience. Those could be called content warnings of a sort. Secondly, there are multiple other ways of finding out the general content of a book via reviews, plot summaries, author interviews, etc.
(2 of 4) But my primary disagreement is the perceived necessity to shield fragile readers from content they may find distasteful. I understand that reading is often an escape and coping mechanism and that some people don’t want to read about events similar to ones that are painful to them. But I also think it’s important to face ideas and subjects that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable to the reader.
(3 of 4) This is how we learn and strengthen ourselves, by facing things we are afraid of, not by hiding from them. I think the ability to filter should be required of the reader with full context, not based on a laundry list of spoilers. Think about what the content warnings would be for Harry Potter. Or LOTR. A Song of Ice and Fire. The Redwall series. Lirael. American Gods. Persepolis.
(4 of 4) Loads of incredibly popular and influential modern books have no content warnings and I honestly can’t see how they would be an improvement. I do think it should be the readers responsibility to filter what they can and can’t take as they go instead of being scared off. They might surprise themselves.
First off, thank you for responding to my post in such a polite and measured way! It is much appreciated.
So there’s a lot going on in what you’ve said, but I’m going to focus on this:
“I do think it should be the readers responsibility to filter what they can and can’t take as they go instead of being scared off. They might surprise themselves.”
I do agree in that people cannot live in a bubble.Oftentimes, the things that trigger people are omnipresent, unavoidable, andare things that people should (for the the sake of their own mental health) be able to come to terms with.But you and I shouldn’t make the decision of how and when people ought beexposed to traumatic content “for their own good.”
Let them make that decision for themselves.
Think of it like this.
Let’s say someone’s lactose intolerant. They experience unpleasant and very uncomfortable digestive symptoms when they eat dairy products.
You have made an absolutely delicious meal and you’re offering some of the food to them. Before they eat it, they ask you if there’s any dairy in it.
What would you do?
Accurately describe the content of the food: “There’s nodairy in this whatsoever,” “Yes, there’s dairy in it, but only a tiny bit of it,”or “This is filled with dairy products.”
For many people, knowing dairy is there means they can takelactaid – and thus eat the food and not suffer any consequences. Sometimes, someonewon’t have any lactaid with them at the time. They’re still going to eat and enjoy thefood, but only once they’re ready for it.
For those that lactaid doesn’t work for, knowing that dairyis there means they can make an informed decision about eating the food. Theycan decide if the food looks delicious enough to risk having the unpleasant symptomsthat come with it.
Don’t answer, and let them figure out if there’sdairy in it for themselves. They’ll stop eating it if theytaste dairy, right?
By the time they realize they’re eating dairy, it’s often too late. They’ll start having the symptoms even if they stop when they realize it.
Shrug and tell them to ask someone else who’s eaten it.
The problem with this is that it requires finding someone who’s eaten this exact dish before who was on the lookout for dairy products. Sometimes people don’t realize that there’s even dairy there, because they’re not sensitive to it. It’s also time-consuming, and there’s no guarantee they’ll find anyone at all.
Tell them: “Dairy products are literally everywhere. You can’tavoid dairy forever, so you should just toughen up and get used to the symptomsof eating dairy products.”
Some people can tough out their symptoms with minimal discomfort, and they can grow out of it entirely with enough exposure.
Other people can have a life-threatening reaction to lactose that requires hospitalization if they eat anything with the slightest bit of lactose in it.
Most lactose intolerant people are somewhere in between. But when someone asks you “hey, is there dairy in this?” you don’t know what kind of reaction they’re going to have, and it’s an invasion of privacy to interrogate them to see if they “deserve” the content warning or not.
And it’s not just about people who are lactose intolerant.You’ve also got the people who fuckinglove dairy and are more likely to eat something they know has that type of dairy in itthan something without it.
So do you get what I’m saying? It’s not that people with triggers are necessarily trying to isolate themselves from the world. They’re trying to brace themselves. They’re trying to see if the book or movie is interesting enough to merit trying to tough out the bad parts.
So let’s look at what happens if an author chooses to include content warnings:
The people who don’t care about content warnings won’t read them. It won’t affect their experience in any way.
People who like stories with certain kinds of mature themes will find your work more easily with content warnings.
Readers who need content warnings can make an informed choice of whether to read your work or avoid it entirely.
Readers who don’t want to read certain kinds of content wouldn’t have enjoyed the content no matter how it was presented. By giving the content warning, you prevent them from both wasting their time and experiencing distress.
It only benefits your readers, at the cost of a few minutes of the author’s time.
So my question is…why wouldn’t you want to have content warnings?
The character needs to have problems with being social – they’re uncomfortable with and have a limited ability to form close relationships. They also need to experience some psychotic-like symptoms and act eccentrically.
The character needs 5 or more:
Ideas of reference – the character believes that coincidental events have a specific and special meaning to the character personally. Not as strong as delusions of reference.
Odd beliefs / magical thinking – believing things that aren’t considered normal by the character’s culture, and influence the character’s behavior – e.g. exceedingly superstitious, believing in ESP / telepathy, strange fantasies
Feeling, seeing, hearing, etc, unusual things – not quite on the level of hallucinations
The character has a smaller range of emotions, or displays inappropriate emotions (laughing at a funeral of a loved one, etc.)
The character’s behavior or appearance is strange, odd, or eccentric
They don’t have close relationships (aside from immediate family)
They have extreme social anxiety that doesn’t go away when the character gets to know others. Note – this is based more on fears and paranoia about others rather than being worried about being criticized.
This can’t occur only during the course of: schizophrenia, bipolar/depressive episode with psychotic features, other psychotic disorders, or autism spectrum disorder.
Writing advice for a character and giving them a cold static list from the DSM isn’t helping. The DSM is a guide for professionals. What does STPD mean for the day to day of a character isn’t in there. What kinds of paranoia aren’t covered. What do the close relationships they have look like?
And even then the DSM doesn’t show the whole picture. For instance, I have dated people and had long term relationships. I have autism and stpd. (Both professionally diagnosed! The caveat about autism has to do with the social stuff.) I have also rarely experienced full hallucinations. These things aren’t rare amongst other STPD experiences I’ve read about either.
The best thing you can do to find out about a diagnosis is look to the people it affects and what their lives are like and see if it matches your vision for your character. There’s a lot of context missing from the DSM, and that context is important.
This post is just one part of a series that seeks to make DSM-5 diagnoses more understandable and accessible to people. Its intended purpose is to help writers make sure the characters they’re writing actually fulfill the criteria of the diagnosis they hope to give their character.
I know the DSM-5 is not the be-all-end-all of clinical psychology. I’ll be the first in line to admit that it’s very, very flawed. But it’s what we’ve currently got, and there’s no way to talk about mental illness without it.
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