Headcanon: Claire’s Mental Illness
TW for brief mentions of child neglect.
So for the longest time I headcanoned Claire as having some form of mental illness but I never found one that fits until now. It fits her symptoms and background exactly.
Claire practically grew up on her own, having no parents or primary caregivers. In adulthood she had difficulty with empathy, self esteem issues, violence towards herself and others, extreme aversion to physical contact, inability to form relationships, alcohol addiction and unhealthy sexual relationships & increased vulnerability to abuse.
I recently found out about something called reactive attachment disorder while researching. Basically it’s caused by abuse or neglect as a child where the child fails to attach to a caregiver and thus never learns how to form bonds with others. They never fully develop empathy and don’t realize the consequences of hurting others, and often cannot form healthy relationships in adulthood. Some people who have it never really recover like Edgar Allen Poe, and others who have treatment can develop normally and become successful and happy like Helen Keller.
Treatment for the disorder in a healthy way involves therapy that helps the patient to accept love, affection, and eventually form bonds. Unhealthy treatments usually involve forced contact and distressing/restraining the patient until they lose their will, and then show them affection and they’ll- sometimes- form bonds then out of desperation but this method is usually ineffective.
In Claire’s case, she was abandoned and neglected as a child leading her to not develop attachment. After tremendous violence and wrongdoing due to the effects of her condition, she ended up being punished for her actions once arriving in Hell. After her will was slowly broken down through torture, humiliation and abuse, she had practically given up. If it weren’t for some of the employees helping heal her, she would’ve never learned what it was like to be cared for or treated with affection and nurturing. Through this help she did learn to feel empathy and attachment. Only after she had recovered and learned was her situation evaluated and her condition finally discovered.
The RAD diagnosis did not exist during this time period, however it was clear Claire was struggling mentally.
