Against a background of exam-related stress, parental anxiety, and under-resourced outside support for troubled teens, mental health issues, perhaps unsurprisingly, have featured in a lot of recent YA fiction. But how much does it help to read about what you suffer? To me, it depends on the writers’ research, how they deploy it, and their attitude to the conditions they describe.

Some big names are involved in this trend. Sophie Kinsella’s YA debut, Finding Audrey, has a teenage heroine, wry, dry, astute – and all-but-housebound, hiding behind dark glasses in a single, safe room at home. Following a traumatic act of bullying, Audrey has left school and cut contact with the outside world, imprisoned by devastating social anxiety. Her home life is made still worse by the drastic measures her Daily Mail-addicted mum takes to keep Audrey’s brother Frank offline, and by Frank’s friend Linus, determined to winkle Audrey out of her seclusion. The book offers a transporting, sensitive insight into an invisible but debilitating disorder. At times deeply uncomfortable to read, it refuses an easy “straight graph of progress” and a nice neat happy-ever-after. Instead, it reminds the reader that jagged lines are inevitable; every life has its share of pain and loss, whether there’s a mental health diagnosis involved or not. But with luck, support and time, Audrey can flourish again, despite her anxiety; and feel proud of herself for doing so.

It’s a challenge, too, at times, to read about Mikey, not-quite-hero of Patrick Ness’s upcoming The Rest of Us Just Live Here, who navigates adolescence burdened by periodic flares of OCD that force him, when triggered, to wash the skin off his hands. Ness’s story should prompt a reappraisal of the flippant use of phrases like “a bit OCD”. The fury Mikey feels at being unable to “break the loop” unaided, and his despair at doing painful, unnecessary damage to himself, are clearly, undramatically rendered, drawing on the author’s personal experience. Here, OCD is not the whole story; it isn’t even the focus of it. But it’s a part of Mikey’s life that has brought additional difficulties in his already uneven path Acknowledging and exploring it, as Ness does, may help sufferers accept, and friends empathise, even as they wince in recognition.

David Owen’s debut, Panther, deals with the underexplored subject of disordered eating in a male protagonist (something Erin Jade Lange also dealt with in 2012’s BUTTER) – and with the intense, impotent anger and pain felt by teenagers living with depressive family members and trying to retain space for their own difficult emotions. Having a bipolar diagnosis myself, this book “found me where I live”; I found it profoundly unsettling, but also profoundly powerful. Owen’s focus on the sibling affected by depression at second-hand, rather than the primary sufferer, is a courageous decision Although it may upset some sufferers to see depression’s effect on family so starkly laid out, I think it adds valuably to our store of knowledge to show “malignant sadness” rippling outwards, touching other lives.

All the Bright Places, Jennifer Niven’s recent bestselling love story, gives an insight into the superhuman feelings of mania as well as the engulfing whale-mouth of depression. I didn’t get on particularly well with the mercurial Finch, one of Niven’s two narrator-protagonists. While I sympathised with his label-rejecting philosophy, I also found his rejection of the available help (not much, to be fair) both sad and worrying. But this reflects a truth for many sufferers of bipolar disorder, as well as other mental health conditions – it’s hard to ask for and accept help when it comes with unwanted labels, inferences and interference, and, frequently, a healthy helping of stigma on the side.

Andrew Norriss’s Jessica’s Ghost, on the other hand, is a light-touch, curiously uplifting exploration of suicidal impulses in teenagers, and of the manifold factors that drive young people to believe themselves worthless failures, better off dead. The well-worn idea of a ghost who cannot leave until her purpose is fulfilled is given a thought-provoking new slant here – the range of Norriss’s characters is a particular strength, giving the lie to the idea that anyone’s shining circumstances can make them immune to depression.

And Dawn Kurtagich’s soon-to-be-published The Dead House explores the mysterious, often misunderstood territory of Dissociative Identity Disorder against a backdrop of unsolved tragedy. Here, again, I had some reservations about the treatment of the protagonist(s). Although the book offered some fascinating insight into the alters of DID, the gruesome, creepy set-up made it hard to empathise with Carly and Kaitlyn, who seem to share the same mind, alternating day and night. The detail of the psychiatrist’s reports which made up much of the story felt real, however, creating a clear sense of how powerless patients can be made to feel when it’s their mind that’s malfunctioning, rather than their body.

To me, seeing anxiety, depression, OCD and other mental health disorders on the printed page, being struggled with, surmounted, lived with and accepted, and examined in empathetic and enlightening ways, is enormously important, especially when mental health issues among teenagers are on the rise. They don’t always need to be centre-stage – but they do need to be well-researched, acknowledged, and treated with the respect due to any potentially life-threatening illness. Most of all, though, they need to be there.