Mental Illness

The impact that untreated mental health issues can have on teenagers is demonstrated through the character of Tori, who refuses to seek help from anyone because she is too afraid of being vulnerable with anyone to reach out for help. On the surface, Tori has a loving family and friends at school. However, she is emotionally detached from both her parents, and she takes on a parental role with her two younger brothers—one who is seven, and one who suffers from his own, very outspoken mental illness issues. At school, she increasingly finds herself alone and without anything to say to the people around her because of her depression, and the isolation only makes her depression worse.

Tori’s mental illness issues reach a crisis during her junior year of high school, but she keeps everything she feels a secret, and tries to fix...