- Nethra
Intern, Feb - March 2023
"Being mentally healthy is so last season"
With increasing conversations and struggles to destigmatize and bring mental health issues to the forefront and normalize the struggles of mentally ill individuals, having a mental illness has also now turned into a social media trend.
With the kind of hyper-exposure that the generation of today has to media outlets and information online, these kinds of trends make it extremely difficult to separate information from trained, educated psychologists and those who are self-diagnosed social media trends based on scattered instances and incomplete information.
"5 Signs you have ADHD", "Follow this reel to see if you have Autism", and "Signs of trauma", if you have ever come across any of these on any social media platform, you know what these are about. They list "symptoms" of these mental health illnesses expecting people to check them off like you check items off of a grocery list to make a diagnosis for yourself. This can be harmful in so many ways wherein people might self-diagnose something that may not exist or even diagnose themselves wrongly and not seek the help they need. Trained mental health professionals after years of training and experience are qualified to make these diagnoses, which teenagers and young adults on social media make so nonchalantly.
It's so commonplace to hear people say "Guys I think I have ADHD", with the only symptom they seem to be having maybe just fidgeting continuously, or "having OCD" because they like cleanliness and organization when in reality both of these conditions are so complex and debilitating many times, which cannot be reduced to a few instances of a so-called ‘symptom’.
Mental health-related terms like “parental trauma, childhood trauma, OCD, and anxiety are so easily thrown around, which in all scenarios seems insensitive and triggering to people actually suffering from these conditions. All the work that has been put in throughout the years to give strength and courage to people to bring their mental health illness to the mainstream is being undone by glamorizing them and reducing them to some form of social currency.
Mental health issues are deemed to make you “look cool”, and have some “character depth”.
Mental illness is portrayed as a romanticized concept, which is desirable, attractive, and something someone would want.
Mental health representation in mainstream movies is also something that needs to be portrayed in its truest sense and not some accessory to forward the plot of the story wherein the mental health illness is either misrepresented or overlooked or forgotten in favor of the main plot. For example, the representation of mental illness and its preconceived notions is portrayed to some justice in the movie “The Silver Linings Playbook”, but however through the course of the movie, the narrative of mental health illness is lost and forgotten in favor of furthering the main plot of the love story between the protagonists and thus is not dealt with justly.
The unfortunate consequence of these trends is that it takes away from the voice, expression, and vulnerability of the people who are actually voicing out their struggles with mental health illness which gets lost in the sea of these misinformed, glamorized trends.
It must be understood that normalization and destigmatizing mental health illnesses do not mean trivializing them. They are serious conditions, which require a professional diagnosis and treatment and they are associated with distress, disability, or a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom (DSM-IV), and are not some trend you can hop on, to be "quirky", or "caught up with the trends".
If at any point in time, you may feel you are experiencing any form of a mental health concern, reach out to a professional, and do not rely on social media to diagnose and treat mental illnesses, as it can be seriously harmful and detrimental.
Lastly, having a mental illness is not something that makes an individual “quirky” or “cool”, it is much like any physical illness, something that is not meant to be glamorized or romanticized as a trend or otherwise. And after so many years of struggles and efforts, if mental health is lost as ‘just another trend brought on in vain’, it will be such a tremendous loss. This is also why all of us need to be sensitive and perceptive about the content we like, post, share, and consume on social media.
It is very important to consult a trained professional if one feels they are having any kind of mental health related issues rather than self diagnosing on the basis of what social media says.
An exceptionally important and relevant piece.
We need to have more discussions on this! So important!!