This is wonderful! Can I request some resources on
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)?
These are ones I see mistaken a lot; and yes, I agree that misrepresenting disabilities/illnesses can be very offensive; especially if
- You are using it as a gimmick or quirk to make your character more interesting. People who have these kinds of life-altering conditions don't usually appreciate people trivializing them like this.
- You only portray the parts of the disability you find interesting or sympathy-generating. Did you know that narcoleptics, in addition to falling asleep round the clock, also tend to have severe seizures? Or that medications for a lot of conditions can give you upset stomach, vomiting, depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping or restrict your diet?
- You use it to create an image that 'people with X condition are scary/dangerous/untrustworthy'. Do I need to explain this one?!
I'll try.
Multiple Personality Disorder is not an actual disorder.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DiD) is however the disorder most are going for, and is
"characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately control a person's behavior, and is accompanied by memory impairment for important information not explained by ordinary forgetfulness." In general, a person who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder would be classified as a non-functioning person even with medication, and would not really be suitable in a role play, which is interactions-driven, as the lack of coherency and memory blanks would quickly get the character in question in serious trouble, not factoring anything else.
Of all the disorders I've seen, this one tends to be the most abused in terms of people wanting "edgy" factor.
Schizophrenia is
"characterized by abnormal social behavior and failure to recognize what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, auditory hallucinations, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and inactivity." This is often mixed up with DiD in terms of
multiple personalities, a person who suffers from Schizophrenia does not have multiple personalities, but may be unable to separate various thoughts and delusions in their heads from reality, which can include voices in their heads. Someone with milder forms of Schizophrenia can function in most role playing environments, but would tend to paranoia in attempting to hide their symptoms from the world. It should also be noted that most schizophrenia involving hallucinations is not constant: A person is not constantly afflicted with "voices", for example. There are also medications which effectively limit or even completely eliminate certain or all symptoms, depending on the person in question.
People often cannot tell the difference between Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder. I don't blame them: Hollywood can't either.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is different from Schizophrenia and DiD in that PTSD is exclusively a trauma-based disorder, whereas the other two are more often genetic than traumatic. What this means is nearly every case of PTSD can be healed over time. People who have PTSD do everything in their power to subconsciously avoid the event(s) that caused them extreme distress, but will relive it in delusions and nightmares. People who suffer PTSD often have extreme paranoia and never feel safe, even when in a perfectly calm environment. They're often overly stressed independent of the environment and adding more stress can cause them to easily break. For role playing, it is doable, but you don't want a character with PTSD on the front line of a battle unless your entire goal is to have him or her lock up and die, go indiscriminately berserk, or panic and flee.
People often attribute characters with PTSD where it wouldn't be appropriate. People who have this disorder aren't monsters: They're paranoid and terrified, and this can be hard to play seeing as how role plays thrive off of interactivity and paranoia and terror are the opposite of this.
Bonus material for people who want to learn more about PTSD from the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Manic Depression is usually referred to as
Bipolar Disorder, and is characterized with elevated, excitable moods that then swing down to depressive, fatigued moods. What makes this different from every day life is in how extreme the swings are and how suddenly they can come about. Notable, people in the mania phase of Bipolar Disorder often become more aggressive and often suffer with impaired judgment, whereas people in the depressed phase become more defensive and reclusive. Bipolar Disorder has a large number of medications that can assist each individual, aimed at lowering the extremes of one or both states. Depending on whether the disorder is trauma-based or genetic, it
can eventually wear down and be healed over time.
Surprisingly I don't see many people go for Bipolar Disorder, they usually go for Depression. Those that do though often have the character swap between the states every five minutes or so, which is inaccurate: The phases usually last anywhere between a few hours to several days, and vary from person to person, month to month.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is... Well, the Wiki article does it pretty much perfect justice, so here you go.
"Characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear or worry (obsessions), repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety (compulsions), or a combination of such obsessions and compulsions. Symptoms of the disorder include excessive washing or cleaning, repeated checking, extreme hoarding, preoccupation with sexual, violent or religious thoughts, relationship-related obsessions, aversion to particular numbers and nervous rituals such as opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room. These symptoms are time-consuming, might result in loss of relationships with others, and often cause severe emotional and financial distress. The acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and potentially psychotic. However, people with OCD generally recognize their obsessions and compulsions as irrational and may become further distressed by this realization. Despite the irrational behaviour, OCD is associated with high verbal IQ."
Most that portray OCD do so in some trivial way that highly undervalues how frustrating it is to live with. Imagine if before every battle, your character had a compulsive disorder to unsheathe his or her blade in a precise, slow way, so that the blade tip never touched the interior walls of the sheath, and then failing that, became preoccupied with that for the entire battle. It's totally doable, and in my humble opinion the easiest to live with in a typical role play adventure, but that's not really saying much in what we're comparing it to above.
