Kennedy Ryan talks exclusively to PEOPLE about why mental health is at the forefront of the books she writes
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Her new book Score features a main character navigating bipolar disorder, while also highlighting Black excellence
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“Mental health is something that is kind of core for a lot of my work,” Ryan tells PEOPLE
For award-winning authorKennedy Ryan, mental health is at the center of her work for a reason.
PEOPLE recently spoke to the RITA-winning author about her new bookScore, and how one of her main characters, a screenwriter named Verity Hill, lives with bipolar disorder.
Scoresees Verity reconnecting with a former flame, musician Wright "Monk" Bellamy, as they are forced to work together on a Harlem Renaissance biopic more than 10 years after a gut-wrenching breakup. Relatedly, the book explores the importance of protecting one's mental health.
“I always say that a good second chance has certain elements,” Ryan tells PEOPLE. “Because if I'm buying that you're soulmate level in love, then why did you break up in the first place? I need to understand what went wrong.”
Ryan adds that once Verity reunites with Monk, she needs to know what’s different the second time around.
“And so that's what this whole journey is,” the novelist tells PEOPLE. “It's first unpacking what went wrong... For me, it really gave me an opportunity to talk about mental illness, mental health and how vigilant people who are living with bipolar disorder have to be about their mental health, and about their mental state and what it's like to love someone who is navigating that.”
While readers may have been hungry for more from the long-awaited second installment in theHollywood Renaissanceseries, Ryan says Verity needed that break from Monk between college and now “to understand a lot about herself, and understand the diagnosis.”
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The screenwriter also used that time to live her life on her own terms.
“Mental health is something that is kind of core for a lot of my work,” Ryan tells PEOPLE. “If you look atBefore I Let Go, and depression, and you look atThis Could Be Us, andNeurodivergence, andCan't Get Enough, and dementia and Alzheimer's, it is something that's really important to me.”
Ryan, who navigates her own depression, is an avid supporter of May as Mental Health Awareness Month.
“I really am constantly trying to destigmatize the discourse around mental illness and mental health,” she says.
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Ryan adds that there are people in her life in their 40s and 50s who have just been diagnosed, but that she sees how having the proper support and tools has made all the difference.
“Seeing what intervention did, seeing what therapy and medication and an actual diagnosis did, how transformative it was for their life, really inspired me,” she tells PEOPLE. “This is [the] discourse I want to have.”
Read the original article onPeople