Hello, I was wondering... Does it counts if it's not psychology/psychiatry, but magic? Because in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's last edition, Shallya's initiates get a power to cure insanity, and on a chaos star result, get afflicted by an insanity sharing at least one trait in common with their patient's. Does it counts? (Bonus Points as this would be a literal critical failure).
Edited by ElodieHiras
Am I the only one why gets annoyed at how authors think "How am I going to show just how badass this crazy character is? I know, I'll send them to a mental health professional and my character will totes own them so much that the therapist will become crazy!" I've been reading up on psychology/therapists for quite a while now, and the only things that would probably happen if a patient tried this would be providing more material for the therapist to diagnose them with, and/or being labelled as difficult.
For example, the Artemis Fowl situation. It's beyond me how you manage to send qualified professionals "gibbering to their own hospitals" without the use of some kind of drug, or torture, to begin with. I'll ignore that because we're never shown the situation, but the one with that school counsellor and the chair we are. I remember that Artemis pretty much immediately ignores whatever the counsellor guy says and starts commenting on his chair, telling him it's a fake because of machine-tooled somethingrathers. If I were the psychiatrist, I would notice this and consider that he's probably doing this to gain some kind of social "upper hand", and needs to demonstrate to people he meets just how smart he is as soon as he meets them. Doesn't matter if he's right or wrong about the chair, that he felt the need to do it is the most interesting thing. It's also a kind of "avoidance" action (excuse my vague language, I know the concepts but can't remember all the proper diagnoses' names) in that he's refusing to accept the situation he's in, even acknowledge that there might be a reason that he keeps getting sent to these practitioners.
Anyway, point is that psychiatrists/psychologists need more respect, and therapy shouldn't be shown to be useless just to make the character seem more badass. It's like the mental health equivalent of showing how "badass" a character is supposed to be by making them go to the doctor for treatment and breaking the MRI machine. Kind of.
I'm removing an example under Real Life that lists codependency as an example of He Who Fights Monsters. Whoever added this really ought to choose their words better. First of all, a more appropriate phrase would be "He Who Loves Monsters. Secondly, referring to the mentally ill as "monsters" raises some pretty clear cut Unfortunate Implications. I know it was an innocent reference by someone who probably has no idea what they're talking about, but maybe people without much real world reference for mental illness shouldn't be writing about it.