As you may or (more probably) may not know, when I’m not being Kurt’s mun, I am a psychologist who spends my days working on a clinical trial comparing treatments for adolescent depression. The vast majority of my working week is spent with kids suffering from depression and other mental health problems.

In light of Ryan Murphy’s tweet the other day, suggesting that Blaine may well be a sufferer of depression himself, I thought Blaine muns may find some insight from someone who (hopefully) knows what she’s talking about helpful.

There are a lot of fics out there that focus on depressed!Blaine, and the key thing that I notice throughout them is the extreme focus on self harm/suicidal behaviours. An important thing to note is that this is only one symptom of 9, of which a teenager would only need 5 to get a diagnosis. So, in other words, it’s quite possible for someone to be severely depressed and not at all suicidal. And, also, suicidality alone is not enough to get a diagnosis. It can be a marker of many different mental health disorders, so whether or not you go down that route in fics/RP, you need enough other symptoms to be “realistically” depressed.

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A conversation with one Blaine mun lead us to think that, if anything, he’s more likely to be bipolar the unipolar depressed. Bipolar’s a really complicated disorder to describe, and can come in many different varieties, but the most basic description is extreme mood swings. So, having clinical depression (as discussed above), but also broken up with extreme highs.