Board Thread:The Heroes of Olympus/@comment-31481772-20170918161437/@comment-25155763-20170929143658

I think an interesting idea is each god/goddess experiences a different form of mental illness to represent their divide.

Ares/Mars, as you pointed out, seems like a case of MPD. Which makes sense, considering it is a disorder that stems from childhood/adolescent violent experiences, which makes sense for a god of war and spawn of such a tumultuous union as the King and Queen of the Gods. He also seems to know his different forms, but refuses to acknowledge them except to  disagree with everything the other says. Could this be an expression of PTSD, rather than he doesn't remember, Mars won't because that would acknowledge Ares and brink back memories he subconsciously doesn't want?

Then, Athena's would be depression, which makes sense for the goddess of mental prowess, her darkest doom would be not loss of intelligence like the death of brain cells or something, but the inability to use what she does have(as depression is essentially the feeling of being unable to due anything, thus symptoms include laze and stopping of regular activities).

Jupiter's seems to be Bipolar disorder with narcissism, neither of which which is an uncommon behavior in royalty. He knows he's behaving differently and more disciplined, knows everything the other form knows, but simply can't decide who he is-a fickleness not unlike that of a storm going from thunder to rain and lightning.. The narcissism is moreso on Zeus's part, but the audacity to mate with Beryl in both forms whilst knowing she's an alchoholic and only getting worse at raising children...that's some impaired judgement.

Dionysus's is like a hangover, splitting headaches, the switching for a second or two and the verbal irony-he says things that are funny only in reference to his counterpart(Percy's name, Diet Coke vs Diet Pepsi), as if he's sorta being influenced by his switch(change of form/consumption of alchohol).

Of course it could also be that Mars, in the presence of so many Romans and a boy who didn't know what he was, was 'tied down' into an incredibly strong manifestation, so grounded it didn't even have recollection of his Greek form's memories.