Are mental illness becoming a trend?

This is not meant to offend anyone having mental illnesses but it’s just an observation from my perspective. Read to create your perspective through this article by Yami Malhotra.

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WHY ARE MENTAL ILLNESSES BECOMING A TREND?

     For some reason, people have started thinking that it’s cool to have a mental illness (whether it’s actually there or not), but just to gain some more attention people just throw around words like “I’m feeling so depressed today” or things like “why am I so bipolar these days?” without understanding what they actually mean or just to make the other person pity them or make the other person feel like they need to protect them. But in reality, having a mental illness is VERY SERIOUS. You just don’t feel depressed for a day, it could last for days, weeks, months and even years. Not to insult Tumblr here but that app is something that has made the idea of a mental illness look like something very “aesthetic” and cool to have. Honestly, we may not even have too many problems to cause mental illnesses, it could just be a rough phase but Tumblr makes us feel like “I should feel depressed over this...it would make me look like I have a cool, dark, goth kinda vibe”. But just while trying to enact whatever this aesthetic trend that one may be following, they won’t know when they actually will start acting all grim, make a bigger deal of their problems and actually develop a mental illness based on their actions to form this “aesthetic” figure.

     Mental disorders have been normalised to a point that even if you’re having a bad day, you would say that you’re feeling depressed or if you’re anxious before an exam you’ll say you have anxiety or if you care about your personal hygiene you’ll say that you have OCD or if you’re eating a lot one day you’ll say you’re binge-eating. There are so many instances where we have normalised mental illnesses and that’s not okay.

HOW CAN WE MAKE A CHANGE?

     We need to try to talk in a more optimistic manner and not just throw around such heavy words, but you could always replace them with lighter words...without unnecessarily dragging a mental illness into it (unless you honestly have a serious problem).

    The way we perceive a problem that we’re going through, influences our thoughts and actions...if we try to stay positive through all of it then we can actually prevent mental illnesses for coming our way (it may not work for everyone as the circumstances may vary from person to person).

     We shouldn’t normalise or romanticise mental illnesses but at the same time, we shouldn’t discourage the people who’re dealing with them and we should try to help them as well. But we should definitely not fall for posts we seen on tumblr about mental illnesses being cool or posts which show medications for curing mental disorders...it’s not cool.

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Written By Yami Malhotra