Mental health has been a controversial topic in the media for decades. It pops up across every form of media, from television shows and movies to social media applications.
Gen-Z has brought a lot of awareness towards mental health and mental illnesses and brings great efforts towards normalising them. However, a major problem has appeared. In the effort to destigmatize mental illness, we have created a society where it’s romanticized.
In today’s society, creating a new normal is a common goal. In the past, people were scared to admit they had depression or anxiety. But recently, the shame associated with mental illness has dissipated, but that’s exactly the issue.
Having anxiety attacks is deemed as a quirky character trait and suffering from depression adds some spice to life.
However, mental illness can have a serious impact on someone’s life and can be hard to speak about. And to make matters worse, it can now be harder to admit when there is so much stigmatized glamour around it.
The internet is a great place to discuss issues and notions regarding mental health. It is a powerful stage to break stereotypes around mental illness. Best part of it is they can maintain anonymity.
Thus it provides a safe environment, making it easier for people to share their experiences. Interacting with someone struggling with a similar illness on a worldwide platform can be very encouraging.
As much as it is important to talk about these issues, we must make sure that we are not romanticising and glorifying mental illness. At times, it is portrayed as something which is ‘beautiful’ and ‘deep’.
The romanticization of mental health occurs when one portrays a mental disorder as “glamorous” or “beautifully painful.”
This perspective also normalizes mental disorders as something that is attractive and desirable instead of recognizing that disorders are real issues that affect people’s lives in many ways.
"We must make sure that we are not romanticising and glorifying mental illness."
It has been amplified by social media. While this has led to more awareness about mental health, misrepresentations can do more harm.
When mental illness are being described as ‘tragically beautiful’, it implies that pain is pretty and completely disregards the struggles of people who actually suffer from any such illness.
Falsely depicting mental illness can become an issue when it pulls away from the seriousness and depth of it. People downplay the importance of their mental illness and it can make mental illnesses seen as glamourous or desirable.
Social media can compromise someone’s mental state when harmful ideals are encouraged. Mental illness affects different people in different ways, but it’s not something to glorify on the internet.
The sensationalism of mental illness takes away the focus from the real struggles. The problem is that people aren’t asking for help because their issue is seen as a trend, and they’re following the crowd.
That false idea of mental illness can make sufferers who reach out, not taken seriously.
"Mental illness affects different people in different ways."
Sensationalizing mental illness can be harmful, especially for impressionable young teenagers. Those images of self-harm might encourage others to view mental illness as something cool.
Additionally, this can lead people to believe that mental illness is just a part of who they are, and that therapy is a “sham.”
More dangerously, suicide can be contagious. Studies have shown that when the news offers sensationalized stories of suicide or reports attempts in detail, suicide rates increase.
The release of certain movies or series for example, and the recent reported deaths by suicide among celebrities show correlation with the increment of actual suicide cases.
This trend may have started as a way to make people with any kind of mental illness feel inclusive and to reach out to them. However, now, this has gone too far. Romanticisation of mental illness is an awful attempt at making them ‘beautiful’.
"Suicide can be contagious."
Mental illness is not ‘beautiful’ and it does not make you more attractive. It is a very painful physiological as well as physical experience that people go through everyday. It affects people’s life and relationships drastically, just like any other illness.
When mental illness is portrayed by media as an interesting personality trait, that stops people struggling with mental illness from seeking help. After all, why would someone get rid of what makes them interesting?
When people with mental illness avoid getting professional help, their condition will manifest and get worse. But they will also need to hide this, so they will remain interesting to others. Which will harm them in another way.
Sometimes, those who fake mental illness are maybe mentally ill, but not with the illness they are faking, however. This is known in the medical field as Factitious Disorder.
It is hard to understand what mental illness is like unless you’ve experienced it yourself. Just as the name suggests, it’s an illness which is real & affects a huge percentage of population on daily basis. Just like any other form of mental illness it requires proper treatment.
What romanticisation does is that it creates a glamorous and fancy portrayal of mental illness. Social media is particularly awful in creating this distorted image of mental health that is sometimes appealing to people, making it an ‘aesthetic’.
A lot of problems arise when we romanticise mental health. Rather than breaking the stigma around mental health, it feeds to the misunderstanding and misconstructed ideas people have about mental health.
When we clasp to such ideation, we deny ourselves and others to see the illness and people’s suffering.
Social media has shifts our focus from people who are actually suffering from any such illness, by invalidating their experiences. It can be a very isolating ordeal for them.
Teenagers, highly influenced by social media, desire having mental illness, which often leads to fake claims of having one. This involves associating any mental illness with everyday events or moods.
This can affect the minds of kids tremendously, giving them a false depiction of for example, what suicide is and what has to happen to lead up to suicide.
Another example is the representation of suicide and depression in such poetic lyrics is dangerous because it only inspires teens to desire and glorify mental illness.
The normalization of mental issues may not be obvious to people at first, but it is constantly surrounding us, especially in everyday speech. Words that have been neutralises in casual conversations feed right into this.
For example, someone may say, “I’m really depressed because my boyfriend isn’t picking up my calls.” The word “depressed” should not be used in this context. Chances are that the use of “depressed” may draw sympathy from the listener, or cause them to grow concerned.
Depression is a serious mental disorder that is characterized by a set of signs and symptoms, which causes significant impairment in daily life. Negative experience does not mean that someone is “depressed,” and it certainly does not mean that someone has depression.
Depression is not feeling sad and lonely. It affects every aspect of an individual’s life; it even affects the capacity to function productively and properly. According to WHO, around 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. It requires proper aid and treatment.
There is absolutely nothing desirable or artistic about depression.
Anxiety is also not a glamorous thing to have. An anxiety disorder is a mental health disorder characterised by feelings of worry, anxiety or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one’s daily activities.
Anxiety actually causes pain, and panic attacks lead to self harm and hyper ventilation. Someone who suffers from anxiety does not view it as something that makes them ‘feel good’.
Being incapable of having normal conversations with strangers due to anxiety is not a ‘quirky’ thing. It is an extremely isolating experience.
So yes, depression is not just being sad; OCD is not being clean, anxiety is not being worried. A lot of people these days don’t understand the magnitude of these diseases & tend to use mental illnesses as descriptions of how they are feeling.
Mental illnesses are not just mere feelings.
It hurts for people who are actually struggling with mental illness to see people claim to have mental disorders out of proper context and it is not right for people to downplay these issues in order to gain sympathy and attention.
It is even more harmful to those with mental disorders. On top of this, throwing around these terms in normal conversation promotes false information about mental disorders. We cannot educate people about the real impact of mental illness if they are misrepresented.
Lastly, this trend of romanticisation of mental illness had led to extreme glorification and encouragement of suicide and self-harm. You find pictures of girls with scars on their arms, or a flowery picture of a blade all over social media.
"Mental illnesses are not just mere feelings."
This is often accompanied by a quote or a caption that scars are ‘alluring’ or ‘beautiful’. Posts like these start justifying self-harm, rather than educating about the need to seek help.
This romanticization could lead to seeing mental disorders as something that can be easily diagnosed. Tons of websites publish quizzes where people can answer questions and find out if they have a mental disorder.
Someone scoring a high response on a quiz like this is just a hop and a skip away from that person declaring they have a mental health disorder because “a quiz told me so.”
The internet should not tell you that you have a mental disorder and neither should social media.
With celebrities, who have spoken out about having mental health issues, it is very easy for their followers to relate to them after reading photo descriptions or tweets and finding that they have experienced a similar situation once or twice.
If someone is posting about a mental disorder, they should make sure people know the difference between feeling a certain way and having a diagnosed mental disorder.
Feeling sad sometimes doesn’t mean you have depression, and feeling worried about a test doesn’t mean you have an anxiety disorder.
Suicide is seen as a graceful way out. If this notion is kept hyped, it will start presenting itself as a valid choice or a possibility for people with depression. Suicidal people are not ‘angels’, they are human beings who need help.
It is our responsibility to help them, provide them with treatment and not to present suicide as a viable option.
It is great to see that we are starting to normalize mental disorders and show that they are not something to be ashamed of. However, we are sending an adverse message in the process.
Normalizing mental disorders among those who do not face them is not the way to show that having a mental disorder is okay. We need to find a balance between recognizing that mental health issues are important, while not romanticizing them in the process.
As a society we need to stop romanticising mental illness, as it distorts the actual issue and in many cases promotes and triggers trauma. By telling people that mental illness is beautiful, we are teaching them not to seek help or look for treatment.
"The internet should not tell you that you have a mental disorder and neither should social media."
We need to start an honest conversation about breaking stigmas around mental illness, but we also need to stop encouraging its romanticisation.
If you feel like you may be struggling with mental health issues, you should reach out to a mental health professional. These are people who can actually answer the questions you have and properly diagnose you if needed.
If you desperately need to talk to someone and really need to find someone you can trust and could give you verified information you can also head to Plus Vibes, 24/7 chat feature where you get to talk to certified listeners.
Do not rely on articles and self-diagnose yourself with a mental disorder that you do not actually have. Do not rely on a show or movie that portrays someone with a mental disorder to make you declare that you have a disorder.
The romanticization of mental health is harmful to all of us, whether you have a mental disorder or not.
A portion of people argue that some people also use this romanticisation of mental illness to cope with having it. In a way to make themselves see some “positivity” in it, maybe to cope by seeing how others also relate to the romanticised version.
Some are doing it because of lack of understanding. As society moves forward, it’s important for the glorifying & normalization of mental illness to stop. Now don’t get me wrong, mental illness should be normalized but not as in “everyone has one,” but as in “you are not alone.”
We as a society should bear in mind that destigmatizing mental illness shouldn’t cross the line into romanticizing it. Mental illness is a serious problem that needs to be addressed objectively and accurately to remove the stigma around it.
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