“I wanted to do something that wasn’t about her being beautiful or a sex symbol,” Ms. DiCaro said of Ms. Fisher, “but about her being a woman who wasn’t afraid to speak out about mental illness. She became a hero to me because of who she was off the screen more than who she was on the screen.”

“People who struggle with these issues often feel like they’re going it alone,” Ms. DiCaro continued. “But it’s comforting that Carrie, or Princess Leia — who’s cooler than Princess Leia? — was comfortable speaking publicly about her struggles. It made me feel comfortable.”

Ms. Fisher has said that she was first given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at the age of 24, but that it wasn’t until five years later that she actually accepted it. In time, she spoke often about her lifelong struggles with both addiction and bipolar disorder and her desire to erase the stigma of mental illness. She wrote her 1987 novel “Postcards From the Edge” after a stint in rehab following a near-fatal drug overdose. It was during her autobiographical one-woman stage show, “Wishful Drinking,” that she first posited the idea for “Bipolar Pride Day.”