Stephen Chbosky, the author of the 1999 novel, on mental health issues and why it’s important to talk about the issues as well as the recovery

Dear friend, I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand ...”

Friend. That’s what Stephen Chbosky has become to many readers of his 1999 novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Just as Charlie, the main character, writes to a friend whom he feels he can tell anything, so do readers write to Chbosky.

“I think that so many readers want to reach out to Charlie and so I feel like I have become the next best thing,” says Chbosky. “I receive letters, phone calls, emails and tweets with young people facing every possible mental health or just emotional challenge that you can think of. You name the issue, I received a letter about it.”

It was all of the correspondence that inspired Chbosky to turn his novel into a movie, making The Perks of Being a Wallflower into a “communal experience” instead of the solitary reading experience it was before.

“It’s harder to feel alone if you see dozens of people around you laughing and crying or nodding their heads at the same issues,” he says.

The novel as well as the movie are popular with the generation most commonly known to us as the millennials. This is also the generation that is said to no longer face the stigma of seeking mental health help and is represented by the likes of Lena Dunham, who has been quite open about her time in therapy.

After talking to a collection of millennials about their experience with therapy, The Guardian spoke to Chbosky about his take on some of the issues they brought up. Here is the interview, edited for clarity and space.

Charlie: ‘Do you think if people knew how crazy you really were, no one would ever talk to you?’

It’s often said that people don’t talk about their problems because of the stigma associated with mental health. What is your take on that?

At this point, after 15 years of receiving letters and also my own work in therapy and beforehand, I don’t see any stigma in any mental health issue. But I do know that for many great people, they are very ashamed to be struggling.

Let’s take for example, depression. Depression is invisible. It’s an invisible scar and so many people who suffer from it, they are told for most of their lives: ‘C’mon, snap out of it. What’s wrong? Just get it together.’

Before they are diagnosed, they are told these things. Even though there might not be stigma, they have been told to get over it for so long that they feel there must be something wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with them. They just have an illness that they need to treat, just like anyone would treat allergies or a cold. It’s more complicated than that, obviously.

People should do it when they feel ready to do it. However, I would implore anybody reading this to know that they are not alone and that the more they can reach out for support and guidance, the faster they will find relief from these things that ail them.

A number of young people I have spoken to say that they don’t want to burden their friends with their troubles. But isn’t that what friends are for? Isn’t that why Charlie writes all those letters?

My feeling is that a true friend will accept and support you no matter what. For a great many people who suffer from these silent illnesses, I feel they are doing themselves a great disservice by not admitting to their great friends what’s going on, because their true friends will stand by them and all of these people will realize what it’s like to be loved and supported for being exactly who you are, not who you are pretending to be.

“A true friend will accept and support you no matter what,” says Chbosky. Photograph: John Bramley/PR

Sometimes the cost of therapy, which adds up over time, deters people from treating these ‘silent illnesses’. What would your advice be to people who might be struggling with the costs?

Depending on which country you live in, if you can’t afford therapy, there are public services that are available that you can seek. But just as with anything else, private or public, keep looking until you find the person or the treatment that makes the most sense to you.

You need to find the person that’s right for you, as you would with boyfriend or girlfriend or a best friend.

Beyond that, I can say that I am a big advocate of professional therapy. If you absolutely cannot afford it and there aren’t public services available to you, there are books. There are groups that can at least get you moving in the right directions.

Have you learned anything from your readers? Have they changed your outlook on anything?

They have changed my outlook completely. When I was writing my book, I was 26 years old. I finished it when I was 28. I was a very troubled young man and I was trying desperately to find answers that would make my life make sense. The exercise of writing The Perks of Being a Wallflower was my answer. From the moment I published it and began getting letters, people have said to me and thanked me over and over for “understanding them”. What I say back to them is: If I understood you that means that you understood me and you have validated my experiences and my point of view as much, if not more than I have validated yours.

What I’ve realized by the sheer number of people who reached out and all the various problems they have had is how much people have in common and how truly not alone anybody is.

Emma Watson as Sam in a film still from The Perks of Being a Wallflower Photograph: PR

Is there anything else that you think we should be concerned with or looking at?

So often, journalism and writing concentrate solely on a problem. They’ll talk about the percentage of people suffering from depression. They’ll talk about the percentage of young women who have eating disorders. The list goes on and on. All I would ask, as an advocate for change, is if you have statistics about girls with eating disorders I would like in the same articles statements about how many recover.

We focus on the problems so much that sometimes it feels hopeless. If I am a kid and I am reading an article about eating disorder and I have one, I want to hear about people who recover from it. Or else it just seems like an endless parade of misery that has no hope. Focus on recovery as much as you focus on diagnosis and problems.

I can speak from personal experience that with time, with attention, with therapy and with the knowledge and the belief that one deserves better, lives can be completely transformed. Even the worst childhood can be made whole again.

I will say this as a fellow writer: problems are more dramatic than solutions. If a movie is an hour and forty five minutes long, an hour and forty minutes of it are the problem and five minutes of it are the solution. That’s just better drama.

The dramatic aspect of our storytelling - whether you are a journalist, a screenwriter or a novelist – I think sometimes skews things far more negatively than they actually are.

Just give me some solutions is all I ask.

Have you heard from your fans about them getting better and their recovery?

Yes. It starts with understanding that you are not alone.

I will give you the blueprint. You ready?

Step one: the person understands they are not alone, whether through reading my book, seeing my movie, or listening to a friend or seeing something else or reading a book. Whatever it is, they realize they are not alone.

Step two: they reach out. Whether anonymously to an author or to a counselor at school or to a therapist or to a family member or to a friend that they trust.

Step three: that person points them in the right direction of professional or, at the very least, self-help to begin the process of healing.

Step four: years of healing that sometimes might feel hopeless. But as long as you are taking this step, it is not hopeless.

As long as you take the steps you are heading towards solution. The thing that I like to say to anybody going through this and trying to put the pieces back together is: You might be crying every day but they are never the same tears. They are not endless. They will end.

Step five: celebrate when you realize that you have done the hard work of recovery.