Mental health in books (section explained)

I'm going to explain in more detail how this section works and what the things that I say in it actually mean. You can read the first review of mental health in books, of the book 'The coincidence of Callie and Kayden'

If a mental health issue is not directly mentioned in the book, I will not name it. I will mention it if I consider it to be a mental health issue (for example suffers a loss of memory from a traumatic event could potentially be understood as suffering PTSD, but if PTSD is not named in the book as such, I will not give it a name). This is because I am no therapist or expert on psychology so I do not want to diagnose the characters.

Some posts may be about this: about speculating what mental health issue a certain character may have even if it is not mentioned in the book as such.

Some things will be mentioned in the mental health issues and you may think 'that is not necessarily problematic'. Let's give the example of: controlling calories, random sex or going on shopping sprees. These behaviours are not problematic per se, but can potentially become so if they are used as mood regulators. Let's take the example of random sex. There is nothing wrong with random sex, unless someone does it for the purpose of making them feel better and forget other underlying issues. If it is done for that purpose and then afterwards brings other feelings such as shame and regret then it might be an issue. So I'm not saying that random sex is wrong and whoever does it immediately has to have a mental health issue (not at all), but it can be used for that purpose.

The questions at the end of each book review are:

Therapy mentioned? This asks whether therapy is mentioned, is it considered an option to the mental health issue in the book.

Positive or negative image of sufferer of mental health illness? This is not answering whether it is an accurate depiction of the mental health illness. I can't be sure of whether it is 100% accurate but if I feel like it doesn't feel realistic, I will definitely mention that in the review. This question is asking whether it gives a positive image of the character suffering a mental health issue. It doesn't matter that much whether he/she is bad, it's whether it's solely the illness that defines that character and if it is seen as a negative trait. For example, if someone is portrayed as evil because of their mental health issue, I will specify that under this section. I feel like some media tends to show that message, that mental health issues makes someone worse... So I think that it is an important factor to evaluate in a book containing mental health issues.

Mental health issues mentioned: Here again, read the second paragraph of this post. I'm not diagnosing the characters!

Triggering issues? Different things can trigger different people. I will try to state the ones that I feel like could be triggering.

Rating: Following the Goodreads style, I will rate it up to 5 stars.

However many stars are colored in gold, are the rating that I have given it.

The rating is completely subjective and may have little to do with the mental health issues that are portrayed in it.

Keep an eye out for a new review next Thursday!