I have talked about taboos before. This could be the last big one in romantic fiction. I have been reluctant to talk about this one for a lot of reasons.
Why ever did I get onto this as a subject? Yesterday I was with a group of art workers who were being considered to work with people who have some mental health issues. It was that that sparked me into talking about this. The fact that so much of this is hidden. A subject few want to discuss least of all anyone who is suffering from mental health problems.
It is far from sexy and far from the usual romantic sub-genre. Mental health, a lot of people switch off at the title, but please bear with me if you can. We see people all the time and all of us have mental health. Most of us thankfully pretty good but it is a sliding scale, from anxiety and stress to phobias such as claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Some of us cope with the pressures of life better than others. Where I am not advocating that whole romance stories should be dedicated to this, it would be interesting to see the subject brought up within a romance. Maybe it has and I have not come across it? I really don’t know. But I have not seen these kinds of issues depicted either within scripts that I have read for BVS or mainstream romance that I have read. I think it would add to the mix of real-life traits that we endeavor to depict in our stories. I have read about mental health issues in literature and it is portrayed in a very negative way, the stuff of serial killers stalkers and the like. I have not seen more positive examples used as personality traits in a hero or heroine. I may well be totally wrong and there may well be books out there and I have simply not read them. Or it may be that the subject is so left field that nobody would want to read about it?
Have you ever written about it? Had mental as a subplot? How was it received? Has an editor said, “I wouldn’t go there if I was you” I would love to hear your thoughts, experiences, reflections, and stories? Or any views you might like to share. Here, the blog, Facebook or Twitter.