Mentally Ill or sometimes called Deranged villains, are villains who are dangerously ill and have any type of psychological disorder and can be deemed as mentally unstable or villains suffering from mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, Dissociative identity disorder (dissociative villains), Schizophrenia and psychosis.

In addition, a villain who is perfectly meaningful, coherent, and stable can still be qualified as mentally ill if the evil deeds they perform go beyond the usual psychopathy by being extremely fiendish and malevolent, the reason being that no sane individual would think it acceptable to take villainy to the degree that they do.

These characters can be tragic, since the trait of being mentally unstable is not being fully aware of their actions or not being in full control of their emotions, thoughts, desires, fantasies and might go as far as to hurt others including themselves. In addition, many people (both in fiction and real-life) suffer heavily from mental illness and can struggle on a daily basis, so villains who have difficulties with their mental health can often be seen as sympathetic, if not, redeemable. However, there are also many mentally-ill villains that are merely insane, only living to cause whatever brand of chaos their mind craves. Regardless, it is often that these villains are prone to live in fear and tend distrust others because of delusions of persecution, harm and doom.

Good examples include:

• Technoblade, whose live chat is implemented into the story as voices in his head.
• Scarlet Spiker, who has a sadistic personality disorder.
• Wilbur Soot, who suffers from dissociative amnesia when he is Ghostbur, and "suffer[s] from intense paranoia and delusions" as a living being.
• Whisk, who suffers from anxiety and antisocial behaviour when she has her mask off.
• Wrath, who is shown to have an intermittent explosive disorder.
• Penny, who is driven to insanity by gyroids and becomes increasingly unhinged throughout the story.
• Eteled, who doesn't remember himself and probably has depression.

Notes[]

• To qualify as mentally ill, a character must have horrible behavior, beliefs and commit actions which do not stem from their cultural beliefs unless it severely hinders the character's activities.
• Characters who have simple phobias do not count, as nearly everybody has at least one phobia. They should go under Paranoid instead of this category.
• Not all villains are mentally unstable when they first appear. While some are, others who were sane to begin with suffer experiences that causes their sanity to snap. The primary causes for this are prolonged abuse and humiliation. A severe-enough degree of fear can do it too, but less commonly.
• Mentally Ill villains can only be Complete Monsters if they make it clear that they have an understanding of what is right and wrong and meet all the criteria, even in spite of their limited views on reality. Psychopaths/sociopaths will simple spiritual fall under this category as they are fully aware of reality and ‘are not crazy’ whereas mentally ill villains are not completely aware of reality and have limited views on it.
  • Please do not add psychotic villains or dissociative villains under this category as those categories are subtypes of mentally ill villains and adding all three categories on the same villain at once would be redundant.
  • The most vile ones may have psychopathic traits and tendencies, however, if they display the necessary requirements of a psychopath/sociopath while they simultaneously suffer from mental illnesses, then they should be added here instead.
• Non-humanoids entities like robots, animals and demons almost never count, regardless of how evil they can be. To them, such acts are normal or a simple spiritual/cultural function. The only time they can count for this category is if they clearly display human-like intelligence.
• Simply having mental illness does not automatically make someone a villain, as many heroes can also be mentally ill. Mental illnesses can affect morality only to a very limited extent, as more often than not, bad people choose to be what they are.
• Villains who only feigned mental illnesses and don't actually have any do not qualify.

See Also[]

• Mental Illness on the Heroes Wiki.