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As an avid reader, I’m a firm believer in the idea that books are magical. They can give us a path to other worlds, fantastical or not, and allow us to gain a deeper insight into other perspectives. Reading is an escape for me in the same way that movies and TV shows are escapes for others. When I don’t feel like dealing with the issues in my reality, I can dive into another book and step into a protagonist’s shoes. Sometimes the best part about reading is finding a character you can relate to, whether it is by looks, personality, or other attributes. In the book world, especially for young adult books, sometimes topics that are perceived as “taboo,” such as mental health, don’t exactly rise to the surface. Teenagers are at such a vulnerable age where if they don’t see themselves in the media that they consume (reading in this instance), they are more likely to feel alienated in society. As you probably know by now, the stigma of mental health that exists for teenagers is quite restrictive. This is why mental health being shown in literature specifically is so important. While you might read a book to escape your reality and go on an adventure in some far-off, fantastical land, you might also be reading it to relate to a character’s struggles and feel less alone.
If we want to discuss somewhat of a brief history of mental health in literature, I think it would be a mistake to ignore The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Last year, I had to do a research project on a book I’ve never read before, and I chose The Bell Jar. What drew me towards this novel was the fact that it was written and published during a time when mental health, specifically mental health in women, was a taboo topic. Slyvia Plath, the author of The Bell Jar, struggled with her own mental health, as this book is semi-autobiographical. Let’s think about this for a minute: A female author writes a novel about a female protagonist whose mental descent into madness makes up a large portion of the novel. This was huge for the literary world, as this book was published in 1963. Some even believe that The Bell Jar was almost like a diary to Plath. Although most of the events in this novel are fictional, some parallel her life such as the news headlines on the protagonist, Esther’s, disappearance.
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Back then, reading a book like The Bell Jar probably made people uncomfortable, especially women. There was most likely also some judgment by others if they saw someone reading this novel in the mid-1900s. People would think you were “crazy” just like Plath or the main character, Esther Greenwood. I think The Bell Jar was a stepping stone for starting to remove the stigma around mental health in literature, as more recent novels have a bigger focus on mental health.
I also think it’s important to touch upon the issue of “Own Voices” novels vs. “lack of Own Voices” novels. The term or movement, “Own Voices,” is when an author shares an identity with the characters they write about, and these characters are underrepresented or marginalized in both the real world and the literary world. Sometimes, when an author includes a character who struggles with mental illness in their novels, it can be romanticized in a way that stigmatizes mental health even more, and this can usually be traced back to the lack of Own Voices in the novel.
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Of course, sometimes, an author does research and is able to accurately portray a character’s struggles. Therefore, while more books that touch on mental illness should be published, it’s important that these books do their best to accurately portray mental illness and not stigmatize it even more.
When mental illness is portrayed to a degree where you can relate to it, it makes the reading experience all the more enjoyable. You feel like you’re not alone because someone, even if they’re fictional, is going through the same things as you, and that depiction might help you find other ways to cope, such as finding solace in similar book characters. In a recent Forever Blooming podcast episode, Rocky Callen, the author of A Breath Too Late, discussed her book and her experiences with mental health. This book is about a teenager named Ellie whose suicide makes her go through an out-of-body experience, as she tries to unblur the lines between the past and the present through her memories. A Breath Too Late has accumulated 4.27 stars on Goodreads and has been reviewed as “a lifesaver to many,” “heartbreakingly tragic but beautifully rendered,” and “[leaving readers] speechless.” Callen used her experiences with mental health to write this novel, making it an accurate “Own Voices” novel. Although I haven’t read the novel yet, I was able to view a sample of it on Goodreads, and the prose is beautiful. I can’t wait to read it in the future, and I’d recommend looking into it if you can.
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This ties back to my first point, that books are magical. While their primary goal is to entertain, sometimes they are able to give readers someone to relate to in order to help them cope with whatever they’re struggling with.
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