I have bipolar disorder, but I wouldn’t want to ‘fix’ my mind | Gavin Extence

Having experienced the crippling depression and manic highs of bipolar, my relatively mild mental illness has also given me a reservoir of insight and compassion to draw from

A couple of years ago, I started writing a novel called The Mirror World of Melody Black. It’s about a young woman with type II bipolar disorder whose life begins to unravel after she goes over to her neighbour’s flat and finds him dead on the settee. As soon as I started writing this scenario, I knew that I’d probably have to explain it, somewhere down the line. There are certain subjects in fiction that are almost guaranteed to provoke curiosity regarding the relationship between an author’s work and an author’s life.

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about the death of a neighbour; I didn’t expect anyone to ask if that part of the story was based on personal experience (it was, though the context was very different). I’m talking about mental illness. I think it’s nearly impossible to write a story about depression, or in this case manic depression, without people questioning how much of the author is in the work.

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