Responsible Depictions Of Mental Illness In Horror

Fiction is a wonderful avenue for readers to better understand certain mental struggles. Horror does this particularly vividly because it evokes in readers many of the same emotions that mental illness sometimes augments—dread, fear, terror, anxiety, paranoia, disgust and, of course, horror itself.

The genre provides a safe container to work through these emotions. For those who are already all-too familiar with the feelings, horror can be a place to feel seen. Others can simply step into the mind of a troubled character for a few hours, hopefully having left the experience with an enhanced sense of empathy.

As a horror and thriller author with a background in Clinical Psychology, I often find myself drawn to stories with undercurrents of fear. My stories become a nightmarish playground into which I can throw my characters—and ultimately, watch them triumph.

For example, in my debut novel, The Curse in Their Veins, Romanian sister-witches Adela and Veronica discover a curse running through their bloodline. Their grandmother was plagued by the curse, and now Veronica is next in line. In their quest to sever the cycle, the sisters grapple with the question: Are we doomed to become just like our forefathers and foremothers?

In my newest novel, A Song at Dead Man’s Cove, hotel concierge Zarya is lured to the ocean by a Victorian era siren who has imprinted onto her. Zarya has spent her entire life running away from intimacy out of fear that she will be devoured—yet there is grief underneath that fear, and a desire to return to the oceanic womb.

A Song at Dead Man’s Cove also showcases two characters with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). My aim was to show both the inner workings of the disorder and its impact on children of parents with untreated BPD. I wanted to humanize people with the disorder, to vividly portray the heartache that comes along with BPD, but also to depict the real harm that unaddressed BPD can cause.

BPD, like all diagnoses, contains a wide range of presentations, and no one depiction is meant to be representative of everyone’s experiences. The two characters in A Song at Dead Man’s Cove who struggle with BPD are merely two facets of this incredibly multifaceted disorder, which can look quite different based on the angle in which it is held up to the light.

There are responsible and irresponsible ways of depicting mental illness in fiction. When done responsibly, mentally ill characters are not caricaturized—they are multidimensional, with both strengths and weaknesses, and with quirks unrelated to their diagnosis. The author should make readers empathize with characters’ mental struggles, highlighting the human universality of their emotions. Characters are also not treated as representative of the entire group to which they belong. They are mere case studies—not meant to be a prototype of their diagnostic label, race, gender, religious faith, or anything else about them.

For instance, one of my favorite works of psychological horror is The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. Without spoiling the ending, it turns out that one of the protagonists has a mental disorder—one which has historically been sensationalized in artwork. While perusing through the Goodreads reviews of this novel, I found a review with which I strongly disagreed. The review claimed that Ward’s depiction was irresponsible because it relies on mental illness as the “plot twist.” My question to that is: Is that necessarily harmful?

Ward went to great lengths to humanize the character in question, to peel back layers of their psyche until readers finally understood how they came to be this way. She did not villainize the character. She consulted individuals with the disorder in question as part of her research for the novel. Ward addressed a disorder that is often misunderstood even by psychologists, but in my opinion, she truly grasped its etiology. I shut the book covers with an even greater feeling of closeness towards individuals with the disorder.

Irresponsible representations of mental illness are the very opposite of this. In such novels, mentally ill characters are caricaturized, usually by being portrayed as all-bad. Good fiction always humanizes the antagonist in order to show how they became like this, to depict what very human motivations are behind their behavior—but this is of particular importance if the character in question struggles with mental illness. Certain diagnoses already carry a great deal of stigma, and readers need to feel empathy for characters with those diagnoses rather than contempt. Even if the character in question is an antagonist.

Similarly, irresponsible representations tokenize characters with mental illness, only including them in the story for representation despite a surface-level understanding of their struggles. Such characters contain little character development. They fall flat, because their only characteristic is their diagnostic label. This is not helpful, either.

If an author has the urge to depict a specific mental struggle in which they are not well-versed, this begs the question: What is their motivation for depicting this mental struggle? Is it simply for shock value? To feign inclusivity? Are they playing into certain stereotypes without realizing it? If so, perhaps they should veer away from addressing the topic.

Otherwise, if an author approaches mental illness with sensitivity, curiosity, and compassion, if they do their research, and if they truly see the humanity of the character they are depicting—then that will usually shine through. It will be apparent in the way they treat the subject matter, and readers will also finish the book having gained a bit more compassion.

A Song at Dead Man’s Cove by Ana Yudin

The Heart and Soul of Horror Review Websites. Responsible Depictions of Mental Illness in Horror

Never turn your back on the ocean…

2023. Another person has disappeared at Dead Man’s Cove in coastal Washington. Jaded from her job at the historic Irving Hotel, Zarya wanders to the scene of the tragedy. She has heard her Russian mother’s tales of rusalki—vengeful spirits that have died unclean deaths near a body of water—and never paid them much attention. But now, on a misty headland beside an abandoned lighthouse, Zarya locks eyes with the rusalka and is chosen to be the next victim. She must unearth the siren’s tragedy before Rusalka Week, a period in early summer when water-spirits roam freely on land.

1850. Josephine has just joined her newlywed husband in Washington, in the lighthouse erected by local businessman Hurley Irving. Marriage is not quite what she expected, and her melancholia grows over the course of the winter. The medic prescribes pregnancy as the antidote. What he doesn’t realize is how far Josephine is willing to go in order to become a mother.

“A chilling, atmospheric blend of contemporary mystery and gothic folklore, wrapped in lyrical prose and deep emotional undercurrents”

—Alex Norton from Likely Story

“Haunting, engaging, and heartbreaking”

—Anthony Avina

“The slow unraveling of secrets […] keeps the tension taut and the pages turning”

—Jeyran Main from Review Tales

Purchase a Copy Here

Ana Yudin

Biography: Ana Yudin is a Romanian author, content creator, and Doctor of Clinical Psychology. She writes Gothic horror and psychological thrillers.

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Ana Yudin
Ana Yudin is a Romanian author, content creator, and Doctor of Clinical Psychology. She writes Gothic horror and psychological thrillers.
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Responsible Depictions of Mental Illness in Horror