On Mental Illness: Stigmatization to Glorification

Not too long ago people said something along the lines of "it's not common to go to a psychologist", or "that girl went to a psychologist, she must be crazy!". There was a somewhat major misconception of people going to therapy. The stigma was so big that my dream of becoming a psychologist kinda shattered after college (I guess I thought I needed money to survive :p). Well, the nagging self-doubt slowly but surely crippled my capability to become one too. 

Yet, we are now in a brand new public sphere after just a few years. It’s perfectly acceptable to say that you’re mentally ill, depressed, or plainly sad. "It’s okay to not be okay", so the saying goes. Everyone divulges their so-called oddities, or to a greater extreme, abnormalities. By everyone I mean your friends, colleagues, and even those celebrities/actors/actresses/celebgrams that seem utterly content and happy. So why shouldn’t you? 

It's funny that we're going in the reverse direction in a blink of an eye. It seems rather difficult to find an evasive portrayal of mental illness in any form of media. The salience is so high that we see an immense number of movies and books proudly talk about it, with the no-longer-surprising plot where the protagonist turns evil with a lump of traumatic occurrences. Even more so, a lot of young social media influencers are now glorifying it. Perhaps, the latter has emerged as a byproduct of the former.  

Being blatant about experiencing a mental illness has suddenly transpired to be alluring and inspiring, that sometimes it feels more like an obsession to make you 'special'.  

What a game changer, blame it on the internet. 

It is such an advancement that we have moved on from the stigma. But have we actually helped those who are in need? It is true that anyone who seeks help, regardless of whether that person really needs it, cannot be undervalued and must always be responded in an appropriate manner. People's feelings and conditions are intangible, and you never know what they have gone through. Despite all that, we need to admit that being happy for one day, and being sad the next day is completely normal. Chances are you are not bipolar. 

The internet forces us to think and form a personal opinion in a specific way of a situation instead of presenting that situation solely, that the term personal is on the verge of irrelevance. Like any other trend on the internet, of how easily people follow their idols to act in a similar way, those who do not actually have a condition might actually claim to have one or question their mental wellbeing. 

I mean how could one diagnose one self as having a particular form of illness without letting a professional check on him/her? It’s like saying you have cancer without doing a lab test. 

This has become an inevitable trend that gradually demonstrates the law of diminishing returns. The more you exploit it as a 'cool' thing, the more it is trivialized. As we are romanticizing it as a trend, we are doing more harm than good to those who are seriously battling these mental conditions. In the end, it is merely used as a commodified product to cash out more money. 

So, are we advancing or declining? One step forward, two steps back. 

Alright, I will finish these ramblings of mine with a quote from the book I'm currently reading:

“The internet is engineered for this sort of misrepresentation; it’s designed to encourage us to create certain impressions rather than allowing these impressions to arise “as an incidental by-product of [our] activity.” This is why, with the internet, it’s so easy to stop trying to be decent, or reasonable, or politically engaged—and start trying merely to seem so.” Excerpt From: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.