John Green got candid about the inspiration behind his 2017 novel, Turtles All The Way Down, which has been adapted for the screen.
In an interview with Us Weekly, the author, 46, shared that he hopes the movie will help others in dealing with their mental health journeys.
“When I wrote the book, I was recovering from a really bad period of mental health and conscious of the fact that I was recovering thanks to friendships and relationships in my life that made recovery possible,” Green told the outlet.
“I was also recovering because I had switched up medications and I was using new therapy techniques and all that worked together to help me get to a place where I could live a full life again,” he continued.
“But I also knew, and still know, that stuff is fragile and when you live with chronic mental illness; Sometimes you have periods of wellness, and sometimes you have periods of not-so-wellness.”
Green elaborated that he wanted to write about mental health battles as “honestly” as he possibly could and in a way he “hadn’t seen it written about that much.”
He said that he did not want something to “stigmatise or romanticise, not as an illness that is accompanied by certain superpowers, but instead as a really difficult form of psychic pain that nonetheless shouldn’t define you.”
Turtles All the Way Down premieres on Max Thursday, May 2.