Acute Mental Illness Brought On By A Traumatic Event
I have a character, I'll call her Elena for now, who I need to develop an acute mental break after witnessing one of her good friends being abducted for the slave trade and nearly being taken herself. The story roughly takes place in 16th century Poland and she's about 18 years old
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Mmmh. Unless you mean 'empathetic' in a psychic sense - that she literally picks up and has to deal with vibes that ordinary people don't - I just can't find this believable. Only strong, resilient people can manifest empathy that's worth a damn; what you seem to be describing is a weak, egotistic person whose 'sensitivity' amounts to 'Nasty things upset me more than other people because I'm just so much more SENSITIVE than all you ordinary clods'.
If you want a really cogent reason for her breakdown, how about guilt? Suppose that in this sudden emergency she panicked, pushed her friend off the horse/out of the boat/whatever, and made her escape leaving her friend behind to be captured? That's something that anybody might do and that would be truly shattering; we all like to think we'd behave heroically and stand by our friends in a crisis, and to have been a complete rat is something that she might well just be unable to cope with. (Especially as 16th-century folk placed a much higher value on honour and courage than we do, and had far fewer psychological formulas for forgiving themselves for lacking them.)
She would certainly believe in self defense when necessary, but she wouldn't agree with the idea of something like revenge or torture. If that makes more sense?
Mmmh again. There's nothing that kills the credibility of a historical character faster than giving them 'enlightened' modern attitudes that no normal person in their environment would have had ('Clodius felt it was cruel to make gladiators fight to the death'; 'Hannah felt that blacks were people too, and couldn't see how slavery could be right'). And the fact is that in continental Europe in the 16th century (and for centuries later) torture was an integral part of civilised justice; the Roman law system which formed its basis not merely permitted judicial torture but actually insisted on it. If this teenager has all by herself taken up an opposing viewpoint, she is simply not credible as a member of her society.
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