MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING. In this we get into death, grief, PTSD, anxiety, depression, abandonment, imposter syndrome, emotional neglect, physical abuse, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and much more. If you cannot read about any of these subjects, please take care of yourself. I won't feel bad if you can't read this, in fact I will be much happier if you don't get triggered. So, please read with caution.

Allow me to start by saying, I am simply a 15-year-old with imposter syndrome and slight depression, okay. All of this is from me looking through my own symptoms and later going back for research on writing this. Unfortunately, mental health education isn't exactly the best, especially online. So, if you have any of the mental health issues listed, please critique me if I get anything wrong.

I can't believe I need to say this, but MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES ARE NOT QUIRKY AND FUN

IT'S IN FACT THE OPPOSITE

IDK WHY I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT BECAUSE IT SHOULD BE SELF-EXPLANATORY, BUT I'VE READ THOUSANDS OF FICS WHERE IT'S JUST LIKE:

uwu, i'm depwessed because i cwy into my piwwow at night uwu *insert unholy amount of sad emojis*

LIKE STFU AND DO SOME FUCKING RESEARCH

Okay, now let's start with something I promise every single person in every single RR book has: PTSD

I swear, the only reason it isn't canon is because it's a children's series.

PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) is a disorder that comes from a traumatic experience (war, natural disaster, threats, etc.) or being near a traumatic experience. There have been certain cops, FBI agents, and social workers who have PTSD due to always being around death, abuse, and violence.

A small thing of note here is that women are two times more likely to have PTSD and Latinx, Black, and Native people are more likely to have PTSD.

Now, I'm sure I don't have to explain why 90% of these kids probably have PTSD, but I'm going to anyway.

War. Three of them. And the people fighting in these wars are children aged, like, 10 to 18. 30-year-old men get PTSD. These fucking children 100% do as well.

Not to mention that a lot of these kids faced abandonment, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, or the death of their parents beforehand. That's why there are so many kids who stay at the camps year-round.

You can get PTSD from this too

One of the main symptoms of PTSD is actually canon and used as a very big plot device, which is clever, I must say, if that was the intention.

Intrusion.

This includes intrusive thoughts of a traumatic event, involuntary memories, and dreams.

Dreams are probably the biggest thing within the RR universe. We have our Egyptian magicians practicing lucid dreaming to find out information and, most notably, Roman, Norse, and Greek demigods having involuntary dreams that give them information while attacking them and scaring them awake, making them unable to go back to sleep.

I'm still not sure if that was intended, but it's literally amazing storytelling. It's such a subtle way of conveying PTSD and I love it. Good job, Rick.

God, this is already 500 words. I'm actually scared for how long this chapter might be, lol.

Fawning over writing aside, there are much more things both canon and not that show that these characters have PTSD

Avoidance, something I never see in fanfic, is quite literally avoiding your problems. This can be healthy in small doses, but it is often our main coping mechanism. So, it often makes it so much worse.

If you want to write something focused on mental health, this bad boy is how to do it.

Someone who does this very well in the series is Reyna. She avoided all of her trauma until it caught up to her. Her arc is truly about getting over her trust issues and learning to trust Nico and embracing who she was and her mentality at the time.

She also has a lot of bottled-up anger with her past and everyone associated with her past. We see this with Percy within the first few chapters of SoN. She resents him until she has to accept the fact that he's here to stay.

We can also see Reyna have alterations in cognition and mood. She is always in fight mode, especially when someone from her past shows up.

We can also see this with Leo, who has so much self-hatred for himself, even if he doesn't fully realize it.

Leo's PTSD comes from fire and the death of his mother at first, though it would easily start to shift towards the war and violence. Leo has a lot of involuntary memories about his mother and "Tia" and holds a major amount of guilt towards his mother and a shit ton of resentment towards himself.

However, with Leo we can see that he slowly started to heal, and then stopped. He used to be devoid of emotion and turned that around into a coping mechanism for constantly making jokes out of everything including his own suffering.

We see this similar coping mechanism with Magnus and Percy, however Percy never really developed PTSD from Gabe and Magnus would always face his trauma.

The person I think of the most with this symptom is Nico Di Angelo.

Bestie just wait until we get to his chapter, we have SO much ground to cover with him.

Nico faced an intense personality shift when Bianca died, another shift during the war as he learned to trust again, and then another shift during the second war, and YET ANOTHER shift when Jason died.

The child needs help. Give him some help.

Nico is probably the most well-written in terms of trauma (other than the Cupid scene).

Nico is very resentful. Not to himself, but for everyone else. His self-resentment doesn't come from his PTSD, that comes from his abandonment issues, which we will get into when I write his chapter.

We first see that resentment with Percy. It's literally the plot of the fourth book because Percy thinks the tiny child is gonna kill him.

Then, Nico finds out he's been manipulated by his ghost friend the entire time, and doesn't really have anywhere to put that resentment, so it just goes to Kronos.

Then Nico is alienated, and throws that resentment, not at Percy, but at the world. Mans is so fucking angsty all the fucking time.

Then the resentment goes away, and he undergoes another personality shift when Jason dies.

Except this time, he actually has healthy coping mechanisms.

Another big thing is alterations in reactivity.

Annabeth Chase is a big one with this. Her attitude completely changes with Luke after he betrayed her.

We can also see this when it comes to a trigger for her, a cyclops. When Tyson is introduced to Annabeth she is on edge and randomly acts out for no apparent reason. That is until we find out about her past trauma.

We can also see that her ability to concentrate for long periods of time slowly deteriorates and she has more and more anxiety (imposter syndrome)

In order to write PTSD, it is important that you understand where they got PTSD and that PTSD affects everyone differently.

For example, Leo doesn't deal with outward resentment, he deals with inward resentment because the fire was his fault, not anyone else's. But Nico deals with outward resentment because people used him, and his trauma is afflicted by other people.

Remember when I said that thing about women and POC? Yeah, that's because of this really cool thing called bias!

For women, we're more likely to have PTSD because more and more heinous acts are being pushed onto us daily. It's not longer if you've been sexually assaulted/harassed, it's when.

For POC, we're subject to racism all the fucking time.

So, when writing PTSD, please keep in mind the biases that may come from intersectionality.

In certain cultures, it's taboo to get therapy and speak of trauma and abuse is normalized.

Actually, in every POC culture, abuse is expected. Let me rant for a moment.

Every POC I've ever met has a different abuse joke. For me it's the belt (Black) and the chancleta (PR), but my Malay friend joked about the wooden spoon and rice bag

But as soon as a white person speaks of punishment it's like... my phone got taken away. Like, bestie that's it??

anyway, so in white culture therapy and getting help from abuse is normal. in other's it's not, so keep that in mind when dealing with internal arcs with mental health.

Alright, this was 1,500 words and my fingers hurt.

lmk if you have any questions at all, and if you would like more advice on writing within pjo, please check out riptide2406 fanfics in a nutshell. It's much more comedic than this, and there is much more material.