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 Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:37 am
As the topic title says, just looking for some opinions, not necessarily going to pursue this idea but I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in reading something like this.
My idea is to write a story about a teenage girl with a myriad of mental health problems that renders her "clinically insane" and she is hospitalised. The doctors manage her other issues but when they try to eradicate her visual-audio hallucinations, nothing they do works and the girl soon reveals that the "hallucination" is actually her imaginary friend who has kept her safe throughout all the different mental illnesses she has had to face. When the doctors discover this, they try to figure out a way to stop her from needing the imaginary friend anymore and settle on some kind of medication before sending her home.
After a few weeks however, the treatments stop working and she attempts suicide and is hospitalised again. In counselling sessions after the attempt, she tries to explain again to the doctors that her imaginary friend kept her safe, stopped her from making reckless decisions and looked after her when she couldn't but they refuse to take her off the meds. She continues to deteriorate, hurting herself and going into violent rages as well as threatening to kill herself and other members of the ward until one day she finally loses it and holds the doctor at knife-point, threatening to kill him if they don't let her off the meds. The police are called and she is talked down before they sedate her and discuss what to do, now that she is showing signs of serious psychological issues.
Her parents are called in and her mother fights for them to take her off the meds, believing that her daughter is fine with the meds to control her other problems and that she needs her imaginary friend. With a lot of hesitance, the doctors agree and wean her off the meds and her imaginary friend returns. They ensure that she understands he isn't real before releasing her and she never has a problem again.
I'd write it in first-person with alternating perspectives between the girl and the doctor and I'll need to do heaps of research before I get too far into it, as well as doing some character building but what do you think of this skeleton plot? Please, if you have any feedback, let me know smile Thanks guys -Em xoxox
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:21 am
I find this story immensely offensive on multiple fronts. neutral HEY, YOU WANTED OPINIONS.
Besides that:
- "Insane" is not a medical diagnosis, it's a legal one and one that leaves you at the mercy of doctors who may not want you to ever see the light of day again. This is why smart people realize that claiming insanity is a Bad Thing.
- Imaginary friends usually "vanish" after childhood for a reason, and given how halluciations are usually treated the imaginary friend would not be there. Also, VIOLENT/SUICIDAL IMPULSES DON'T WORK THAT WAY.
- Doctors would not let a violent/suicidal patient go, especially if she threatened one of them by knife point (and where did she get that knife? Patients who have a history of mental issues are not going to be allowed near sharp objects). In fact, they'd mostly likely just tranq her and use restraints, then alter the drugs and dosages so that they still work while minimizing side effects.
- On the subject of drugs: A drug cocktail like she'd be on would need constant blood tests to make sure that she wasn't having nasty interactions/just plain bad reactions to her meds. I, for example, am on a fairly low dose of lamotrigine for epilepsy, and I still need frequent blood tests to make sure my liver isn't dying. Bad reactions are something that any competent doctor constantly watches for, if only to protect his/her job.
- What is this "myriad of mental health problems"? This is a serious question; while many mental disorders are comorbid, you need to take into account how they'd affect her ability to function even post-treatment; most people with multiple, severe, untreated disorders are not going to be capable of functioning to the degree you suggest in that story; hell, even minor untreated issues can severely impact a person's social skills. To use me as an example again, the combination of ADHD, epilepsy, and possibly other currently-undiagnosed disorders has left me with severe deficencies in proper social interaction, most of which were caused by lack of proper socialization in childhood caused by said issues. I don't doubt that your girl would be the same, especially given that kids are assholes.
There's probably more, but I'm achey and this is long enough as-is.
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:51 am
Yes, I did say that I wanted opinions but I also said this was a skeleton plot and that it needed to be researched properly before it went anywhere. Thanks though
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:42 pm
Doesn't change the fact that when someone's first response to that is "you are dismissing all of my difficulties as me not trying hard enough to magically get better" you really, really, really need to consider just scrapping it, or at least changing the genre to fantasy and making the imaginary friend into a spirit or something. God knows I've done the same when faced with the same reaction, and it's something pretty much all writers need to adjust too. Not every idea is made of gold.
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 10:28 pm
And something all writers should know is the power of words. Don't judge me based on an idea, you know my idea for a story, but not my story. There's these things called "tact" and "respect" that tend to leave you with less people annoyed at you.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:46 am
Having an imaginary friend make everything better is not treating the topic with tact or respect.
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