For some reason in more recent years that I have noticed, people seem to romanticize mental health disorders. People throw around terms such as depression, anxiety, bipolar, and OCD as if they aren’t serious illnesses that can lead to some even more serious consequences. It seems as though teenagers think it’s trendy to have depression or anxiety or the like. It’s almost as though some people use it as a means of gaining attention from others; however, these illnesses are extremely serious and have high potential to lead to suicide- something nobody should ever desire or fake. (With that said, I do still believe that every case of potential mental illness should be taken seriously and with much care.) Social media seems to portray depression as something beautiful or as something that should be desired, and too many people have started to buy into this idea. There are endless accounts on Twitter and Tumblr especially that glamorize the idea of having depression, especially for teenage girls. They drill the idea that being a vulnerable, tragically sad girl is the way to be to get boys who will save them from themselves and then everything will be happily ever after, the end. However, the end for this fairy tale version of depression is polar opposite of the actual potential endings of people’s lives who suffer from this illness. According to save.org, 90 percent of all people who have committed suicide have pre-existing mental health issues. People are dying from suicide as a result of mental illness every single day and some people still have the audacity to joke about it or pretend they want to have one. Lack of sleep, loss of appetite, and inability to complete normal daily tasks are not side effects that people should be craving.
One of my closest friends who was diagnosed with major depressive disorder over a year ago described her daily life as “waking up from a bad dream but then realizing it isn’t a dream and this is real life”. She suffered from depressive episodes that led to self-harm and thoughts of suicide that affected her life significantly. She also felt afraid to tell others about her depression in fear that people would think she was being selfish, and was sensitive to generalizations about depression or that related to depression or suicide, such as people throwing around the words “kill yourself”. As a side note: people really need to start understanding the effects that their words can have on others and stop using phrases such as that one. Healthy people along with mentally ill people can take certain words to extreme offense, and it’s important to keep that in mind when saying anything that could be interpreted negatively. Anyway, it is clear that my friend was affected significantly by an invisible stigma that surrounds mental illnesses- a stigma that needs to be ended.
This stigma makes mental health seem unimportant and inferior to physical health, when in reality mental health is just as important- if not more important- than physical health. It is crucial for people to be in a healthy mindset in order for them to live a happy, healthy, and productive life. Additionally, people seem to have a negative opinion around the idea of taking medication for mental disorders. However, if it’s completely normal to take medicine for an illness of the body, why isn’t it acceptable to take medication for an illness of the mind? With stigmas such as these that aren’t being addressed or changed, there is no way people’s opinions on mental health will change.
It is absolutely imperative that we as a society end this stigma and romanticism of mental health disorders that affect people so negatively every single day. Mental illness is not pretty. Mental illness is not trendy. Mental health is not a joke.
