Sorry Brovo, but I'm with Halo on this one. It really bugs me how all the discussions in here and in OT always become debates such as these. There doesn't need to be a winner or loser, you know. Halo just wanted to voice an opinion that he wanted you to consider, and honestly I agree with him. Yes, I have read the whole thread and I see in the end that you were being helpful, but for much of it, you didn't come off as such. To me it mostly looked like you were attacking Wayne by calling him out on what may or may not have been a lie, and he seemed rather frustrated by it to me.

I'm not saying that was your intention. I understand that it wasn't. And I understand your reasoning for being skeptical. All I'm saying is that the way you presented your skepticism could easily be misinterpreted as an attack, and I think that's something you should keep in mind. Because, like Halo said, that can be potentially harmful to people with real mental illnesses - and that's a point I agree with. While [i]I[/i] see how you were trying to be helpful, I'm not sure Wayne ever really felt like he was being helped.

As for what this thread was intended to be about,
[quote=Platinum]When I roleplay people with mental illnesses... I do something which is probably unforgivable. But, um, well, I do that.

When I play someone who is mentally sick, I do not go and research the mental illness. In fact, I never look up anything at all, not even the name of the illness. I don't even know what I am giving my character. When I create the character, I give them the illness that I want them to have. I give it the properties which I want to roleplay in my character, and twist it the way I want it to function. For instance, at some time I wanted to play a character which was an adult but with the mind of child. I did so, never learned if that was any specific name for that or anything. At another time I wanted to play a character completely unable to feel sympathy or sorrow, or anything else like that, and so I did. At another time, I played someone who got terribly scared and shy without wanting to the moment she even entered vision range of another person. Some of these I don't even know if they are character traits or mental sicknesses, I give my character what I want them to have.

More than once I've had my character whose mind I've twisted a bit be asked about "he has -name of mental illness-, right?"... And my answer is "Could be!". At times, I go check what it was that was referred to, and lo and behold, it was what I had given my character without even knowing the name of it or doing any particular research. I have yet to encounter a time I've been absurdly wrong in what I gave the character, since I never really gave the character that specific mental condition to begin with. I just gave them a mental condition of my customization, after all. Up to the rest to identify which name fits it the closest. Heh-heh.

That's what I do, anyway.

Edit: Of course, I don't mind people who go into detail researching exactly the illness they want for their character. In fact, I respect them, because I could never do the same. This is because, I would get too scared of insulting or misrepresenting actual people with said condition, and as so I shy away from actually calling any such condition by name, even if there is a perfect one for my character. That's just how I work.[/quote]

I do the same thing with my characters, for the most part. Even if I am somewhat basing a character's mental illness off of one that does actually exist, I always try to avoid labeling them by name, just because there's always the possibility that I got something wrong and that I'm misrepresenting a mental disorder that people (potentially even people on the site) might actually have. Seems easier to me just to mix and match whatever traits and symptoms you want to create your own, fictional mental illness for a character. It means more creative liberty, less details you need to get right in order to avoid offending anyone, plus a complete absence of real people to offend. :hehe