im personally talking about research for characters that may have a disorder that you dont experience! it may be more difficult to do this since you don't have this experience, so i made a guide for people to use if they want to :3 im doing this for fun and im not a professional so dont take this to heart.

1) do not use webmd ever.... at least not as a primary source. webmd gives very basic criteria for a diagnosis and even has some stuff contrary to other sources. it can be reliable but its just iffy to me...

2) utilize the dsm-5 and icd-11. these are worded in a way that is used by psychologists in the mental health field so some of the wording might be confusing. the icd-11 is less confusing than the dsm in my opinion, but it's still worded interestingly.

3) use multiple reliable sites in your research. not just the top site from google either. actually like, get down in those search results and find some stuff. at least three maybehaps. personally i used psych central and more medical papers for researching types of symptoms, but just find something thats reliable and works for you. i think you all have written essays for school before

4) look up experiences from people who have this disorder. its more optional but it can make the character seem more real, yknow? i dont know, reading others' stories just made it a lot easier for me to process symptoms and write.

i just wanted to yap a bit because disorder researching is kind of one of my interests ^_^' so yea like and subscribe for more banger kaseko yappathons