Romanticizing and beautifying mental illness has been a growing phenomenon over the past few years. Websites like Instagram, Twitter, and especially Tumblr would be flooded with black and white pictures consisting of individuals with captions that reflect low self esteem, thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or just a mental pain that causes someone to break down and lose themselves. These pictures are everywhere, and it is influencing the minds of the users of these websites.

With this seemingly being a new trend, it seems as if individuals want to suffer from a mental illness. Someone could suffer constant mood swings and then diagnose themselves with manic-depressive illness, a woman could wake up sad everyday and diagnose herself with depression, a student could always get nervous when they have to do a presentation and diagnose themselves with anxiety disorder. It is especially common in young people for them to self-diagnose themselves, and then go brag to all their friends that they have this illness. Claiming to have these illnesses when you don't is self-destructive behavior. I have seen firsthand that once someone claims to have this disorder, they start to believe it's true. Once they believe it's true, they try to get put onto medications to help with this disorder. These medications that are prescribed for these disorders are meant to fix the chemical imbalances in your brain and should only be given to those who actually need them.


We went from living in a world where we should not speak about mental illness, to a world where having a mental illness is considered "normal". We need to start making those who are faking their illness realize that it is not okay, and those who truly are suffering realize that it is okay to speak up and it is okay to ask for the help you need.