Kia Jane Richmond, professor and director of English education at Northern Michigan University, is the author of “Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature: Exploring Real Struggles through Fictional Characters.” Richmond discussed this topic on Thursday at Jamrich Hall in a presentation titled “Confronting the Stigma: It’s Time to Talk About It.” (Photo courtesy of Kia Jane Richmond)

MARQUETTE — Crazy. Psycho. Spastic.

Those might be some of the words young adults, and even older adults, might apply to someone suffering from mental illness.

They don’t sound too flattering, do they?

Kia Jane Richmond, professor and director of English education at Northern Michigan University, talked about her own struggles with mental illness in a Thursday presentation at Jamrich Hall titled “Confronting the Stigma: It’s Time to Talk About it.”

Richmond is the author of “Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature: Exploring Real Struggles through Fictional Characters.”

The problem, however, is real.

In her 20s, Richmond was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and dysthymia, a low-grade depression.

That hasn’t kept her from being a tenured professor, although she works mental illness into her curricula.

At NMU, she educates students who plan to become English teachers.

“I also teach good books, and for over 14 years now in that class, I’ve actually focused us on mental illness in literature,” Richmond said, “so we’ve read both fiction and non-fiction and watched some films about mental illness.”

In her Young Adult Literature class, she includes writing about mental illness as well.

As far as dealing with her own illness goes, she has tried methods such as medications, therapy and even yoga.

Upon meeting Richmond, though, a person might not realize she has struggles, especially when she has a cheerful countenance.

“I’m always smiling in general,” Richmond said. “I’m generally a happy person, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a mental illness. People with mental illness can smile, even when they’re having a bad day sometimes.”

Richmond acknowledged that controlling anxiety can be really challenging — she still has problems driving over on a bridge, and has expressed having a phobia of skunks.

And as with other people who suffer from mental illness, a stigma remains, although that might be improving.

What could help is the written word.

“I argue that using books featuring characters featuring mental illness can help educators to empathize with students who are living with mental illness or whose family members or friends are dealing with psychological disorders,” Richmond said.

Reading books about the topic, she noted, can motivate students and teachers to be aware of language choices, be empowered to confront the stigma and confront bullying of individuals struggling with mental issues.

Richmond discussed several young adult books that deal with characters who have with schizophrenia and other disorders.

One of those books was “Wintergirls” by Laurie Halse Anderson.

The main character, a high school senior, has symptoms of anorexia nervosa and problems with self-injury, which are exacerbated when her childhood best friend dies from bulimia complications.

The senior refused to answer her friend’s numerous phone calls the night she passed away since they’d had a fight.

The main character then relapsed into her illness, reducing her caloric intake and less able to differentiate the difference between reality and hallucination.

“Crazy” by Amy Reed deals with a character, Izzy, who has manic-depression and is written in a “letter” format. Connor is her confidante.

“We see in her writing when she’s depressed and when she’s having a manic episode,” Richmond said, “and being able to see it and understand it over time helps us to empathize more deeply with Izzy and to understand and feel Connor’s frustration, because he doesn’t live near her and he can’t help her from that far away if she’s not going to listen.”

“Challenger Deep” by Neal Shusterman, she said, deals with schizophrenia and focuses on 15-year-old Caden Bosch, who is hospitalized. The experiences in the book are told through flashbacks of his life with family, mixed with his visions of being part of a pirate ship that’s headed toward the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.

Attitudes toward mental illness might be hard to change, but a little introspection could help.

“We’re going to have biases,” Richmond said. “We’re going to have attitudes because we are social creatures and we’re socially conditioned to like certain things and not like certain things.

“But we can question our own biases, and we can question the information that comes to us.”

One example she used was if someone was hospitalized and called “crazy.”

“Wow, so someone had a mental illness and they got it taken care of?” Richmond said. “We need to think about the language that we’re using. Instead of saying someone is anorexic, we can say someone has an eating disorder — because it’s not what they are, it’s a part of of their behavior pattern, just like I don’t say, ‘I’m depressive’ or ‘I am a depressive.’ I say ‘I have depression.”

Richmond listed actions she wants to see to combat the stigma of mental illness, which include changing language patterns so that sufferers aren’t disparaged, sharing examples, seeking treatment and looking for ways to speak out.

The NMU campus has resources for students struggling with issues. The NMU Counseling Center can be reached at 906-227-2980. The Vielmetti Health Center can be reached at 906-227-2355.

NMU student Chloe Wilkinson, who organized the event with fellow student Sadie Knill, said, “I think that this talk was really helpful and important for people to come to.”

Wilkinson also said Richmond was a good example of someone who could be a university professor, yet still lead a “normal life.”

The event was sponsored by Mind Your Health, an NMU student group focused on student mental health issues.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250.