Genre: Urban fantasy. I have a side character who needs a mental illness. This will not be diagnosed in-story, but I'd like to have a good idea to work from so that casual readers will be able to go along with the story without more knowledgeable folks screaming "It doesn't work that way!" and throwing the book across the room. The character is an older (50s or more) homeless man. On his good days, he's functional enough that he can be mistaken for a regular volunteer at the shelter/soup kitchen. It's run by a religious charity, so the minister in charge trusts the character with homeless care packages and the job of looking for people new to the streets and guiding them to the shelter. However, his bad days are the reason he's homeless. On those days he's pretty much non-functional, and I'd like for it to be in a noisy and demonstrative way. One further complication is that he believes he is delusional. He has the ability to see ghosts, but on his "good days" thinks that this is just an aspect of his mental illness. On his bad days he's full-on trying to do battle with them. Suggestions for a diagnosis that I can dig through? Substance abuse is an acceptable trigger/complication.
I believe there are some forms of autism that might work for your story. There was some documentary I watched years ago that featured a little girl who appeared to be fine one day, then the next was having tea with a make believe friend, or animal. And not in a fun sort of harmless way most kids do. They've recently done studies on autism that yielded some surprising results. It's always been assumed that the brains of autistic individuals were "under-connected", but that now appears to be wrong. The study showed these people's brains to be hyper-connected. Anyhow, you may want do some exploring in that direction.
BiPolar - manic depression. Mood swings that last for days or weeks. Trigger based paranoid episodes. Delusional or euphoric states that can be minutes brief, or years long. Not voices or visions, but is absolutely convinced that ridiculous things are connected, chasing him, conspiring against him. Believes he's already heard the voices, not that they are speaking (that would be schizophrenia). I know about being bipolar. Aks me anything about the experience.
For digging & research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stress_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder It's easier for character to believe he's delusional if he have noticed that kind of things in his perception, thinking, emotions... But delusions typical to depression (automatic thinking) are usually totally different from delusions in narcism and psychotic delusions are different than... You get my point? Think about genre + character and story... What delusions could be ok to that story? And then pick the one with that kind of delusions from that list or outside it. You can find a lot more info from the reference lists of these wikisites. Check them.
There is an illness called Psychotic Epileptic Disorder. It's very rare and some don't believe it exists. The term was first really seen in a young German girl called Anneliese Michel. You could just use Psychosis. But the individual will have seizures and have hallucinations. Beings you are using religion in this story I would check out her case.
Thanks for the links Alan, and I really don't think that autism is a direction I'd be looking in. The character won't be POV, so all we'll see is his behavior and what he says. As for the delusions, those are simple. He sees ghosts. The thing is, that is not a delusion, it's an actual ability that he has. However, as he's aware of that he has mental health issues, he believes that the "visions" of dead people are a part of his illness, when in fact they aren't. This won't be immediately clear at first, but he'll end up helping my MC understand that he (the MC) has gained the same ability. Then, during some of his "bad days," the homeless character will die and remain as a ghost, permanently stuck in the bad mode, until the MC can think of a way to help him accept that he's dead and move on.
So I'm not an expert or anything but Dan Wells did something similar in his book 'The Hollow City'-- the mental illness of choice was Schizophrenia.
Talking to or seeing ghosts is not a mental illness. As a parent of a child with Asperger's which is considered on the spectrum that's another "symptom" I would stay away from. If you are meaning that the homeless man thinks he has a mental illness because he hears voices, that would be schizophrenia. Typically they "hear voices" and have delusions. Someone with the ability to see/talk to ghosts would also be jittery/anxious looking over your shoulder because you don't know when you will "hear" the next voice.
Thanks, but the character has two things going on. First, he has a mental illness which I'm working to define which makes him pretty much unemployable and thus homeless. Second, he does see ghosts. Real ghosts. Spirits of the dead who have failed to move on to the next plane of existence. However, he assumes that they aren't real and are an additional symptom of his mental illness. I'm not making any statements about whether or not mentally ill people see or hear things that aren't there to the rest of us, this is two discrete issues mistaken for one.
Since Iain cannot in good conscience moderate his own thread, i shall just step in with a quiet word ... this is a research thread wherein the Op is asking for ideas for his characters development. It is not and will not be allowed to turn into a wider discussion of mental health issues (and while we know autism/aspergers/ASD is not a mental health issue the same applies - it is also not what the thread is about)
With my mod hat back off i'd suggest that you don't necessarily need a diagnosis - if hes living on the streets there's a good chance he isn't receiving treatment so he may not know whats wrong with him himself. Also a lot of homeless people self medicate for their various conditions (and indeed the fucked up ness of being on the street generally) with drink and drugs, and he could easily conclude that his visions were a side effect of alcoholism, or drug addiction or withdrawal Body swerving the specific diagnosis also avoids the problem with readers getting offended because their condition 'isnt like that'
I think there are a zillion ways for people to be off-center with endless variations on the details. Diagnoses often seem to just try to roughly group those ways anyway, and people can also have more than one diagnosed mental illness. So I'd just write him the way you've described him without worrying about any diagnosis. I doubt any medical diagnosis would include seeing ghosts as real anyway, so you're really already outside of the medical establishment with it.
Yeah, I mentioned that he wouldn't be diagnosed in-story, I just want to have something to work from so that I'm not doing the typical "Hollywood crazy" thing that's a mishmash of whatever the writer thought would be cool. Kind of the same way I haven't decided if I'm going to identify the city as Los Angeles or not, but that's basically where it's being set so I'm doing a bunch of research on where things are and how they work there. I'm from the Chicago suburbs, and when I read the first Harry Dresden book, I just never got the feeling of "Chicago" off of it. Anyway, I digress.
