Horror needs scary things. That’s the driving force of the whole genre: a frightening event, person, object, or institution that our heroes must defeat and that makes the audience want to hide under a blanket.

For many readers and viewers, nothing is scarier than the unknown and the unfamiliar, and mental illness and the mentally ill can tick both of those boxes. Worse, because mental illness is so poorly understood by so many, some horror writers and filmmakers feel free to promote exaggerations or outright lies about a marginalized group.

What’s the solution to this problem? I posed that question to Keezy Young, creator of the horror comic Hello Sunshine (out September 23). Young, who has bipolar disorder and psychosis, shared key insights into how they brought the story to life, how their own experience with mental illness drove the creative process, and what they would like to see more of in other horror stories.

Hello Sunshine is about a group of teens searching for their friend Alex, whose disappearance seems connected to his long-dead mother’s apparent suicide and the frightening creatures now lurking in Alex’s house. To bring him home safe, Alex’s friends must figure out what dangers exist in the real world and which exist only in Alex’s mind.

Young told me how important it was for readers to distinguish between the story’s true fantasy elements and the symptoms of Alex’s illness.

“I wanted to make sure that we see Alex’s illness for what it is, without there being any question about what aspects were real vs. not,” they told me in an email interview. “There is (hopefully!) no doubt in readers’ minds at the end of the story as to what’s going on–Alex has schizoaffective disorder, and he is also, separately from that, a witch.”

Depicting the intangible symptoms of Alex’s illness was a challenge that Young overcame to great effect in Chapter Four, which is told from Alex’s perspective at a critical moment in the development of both his powers and his disorder.

“I tried to depict it in a way that readers could follow both Alex’s fractured reality and see through it to what’s really going on at the same time. So what this ended up looking like was making some creative allowances that lean away from realism, in some cases,” Young explained. “I did struggle with this quite a bit, but what I ended up deciding is I’m not trying to accurately depict the thought process of someone in psychosis: I’m depicting what it feels like.”

So, how can other creators do the same? Whether you have a mental illness or not, research is key.

“No matter how knowledgeable you think you are,” says Young, “it is all too easy to fall back on familiar but erroneous stereotypes. Thinking that [people who have a mental illness are] inherently more dangerous or violent than other people is one of the most common ones.”

Another thing to remember is that every mental illness is different, and even those with the same diagnosis may present with different symptoms. While Young could use their own experiences to inform Hello Sunshine, the creative process differed greatly from when they worked on Sunflowers, an autobiographical comic.

“In Hello Sunshine, I had some distance from the character–although they are based in my experiences (along with others’), Alex’s experiences are not mine, and I am not him.”

This is, perhaps, the most critical point to remember when writing a mentally ill character in any genre, or indeed anyone whose identity you do not fully share: they are a unique individual, just like everyone else, and they deserve to be the hero of a story free from harmful portrayals. Creatives can research their character’s specific mental illness and hire a sensitivity reader. Another good way to begin that journey is by reaching for books similar to the one you want to make and identifying what they do well or poorly.

Hello Sunshine is a wonderfully affecting example of a book that horror and supernatural fans should emulate.

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