I have been reading fanfiction for years, and I have seen this issue in hundreds of different stories. I have even included it in my own works, before something happened to change my view of it forever. 

In mid-2018, my mom's mental health doctor confirmed that I had OCD. Horrified, mostly because of how much sense the diagnose actually made, I looked up everything I could find about mental disorders and how to deal with them- and realized what a glaring issue romanticizing mental illness is. 

And it happens all the time in fanfiction. 

An example would be fanfictions about the Marvel character Bucky Barnes, who was trapped by the criminal organization Hydra for roughly 70 years. During this time he was brainwashed and manipulated into killing hundreds of innocent people, and when he wasn't doing that he was kept cryogenically frozen. When he finally made it away from Hydra and got his mind back, he was left traumatized, still horrified by the crimes he'd committed. And the fandom.... they loved it. 

Every fan of Bucky I have ever seen has loved to turn his years as the Winter Soldier into a tragic  romantic storyline. It wasn't beautiful; it wasn't romantic. How could anyone watch the entire 'CA: The Winter Soldier' movie and still say it was? It was brutal, cruel and horrific, not something for you to write cutesy little storybooks about. 

It is always depression and PTSD that are romanticized the worst. Nico di Angelo, a 14-year-old book character who suffered horrible depression following the tragic events of his childhood, is a common victim; Harry Potter, left empty and alone by the death of his godfather Sirius, is another. In fact, the only traumatized character ever to avoid this is Leigh Bardugo's Kaz Brekker, who was left for dead out in the ocean with his deceased brother Jordie and forced to swim miles back to shore using Jordie's corpse as a float. The story was so horrifying and so painful that no one could possibly see it as beautiful and romantic. And I just wish they would stop doing it to everyone else. 

OCD, for example, is not anything like it is portrayed to be- organized closet and color-coordinated clothes. It's biting your nails until the skin around them bleeds because you can't stand having them different lengths, even a little bit. Often, random thoughts will pop into your head making you want nothing more than to do something terrible- I've found myself turning cartwheels around my room at 1:00 AM because if I sit still, my hands start twitching with an almost irrepressible desire to stab my own eyes out. It's terrible, and I absolutely ing hate it. 

For another thing, if you don't have a mental illness, it's okay for you to compare yourself to people who do- 'omg I'm so depressed today!' 'I've lost so much weight I'm, like, anorexic.' 'My sister went stop yelling at me, she's so bipolar!'- but if you do, GOD FORBID you to EVER speak of it, you ing attention-seeker! 

Why? Why does society have this mindset? I'm having a hard time and I want to talk about it. Why am I getting attacked for it?