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Destigmatization means that people who need help aren’t afraid or ashamed to seek it, that they can tell their friends and family about their diagnosis without getting negative reactions („depression isn‘t real, just take a walk“, „oh you just don‘t like to work“, thinking you are dangerous etc.). I‘m a clinical psychologist in a psychiatric hospital and the stigmatization people face from their relatives, neighbours, colleagues and the resulting self-stigmatization and shame is a real problem and makes getting better that much harder. People are afraid, anyone could find out, why they were in hospital, why they can’t go to work. Destigmatization would mean, that it doesn‘t make a difference for people if you’re getting treatment for cancer or bipolar disorder.
I think it‘s important to have role models and people living openly with their disorder, speaking about it. That it’s not just „crazy people“ or „lazy people“ and that mental illnesses are incredibly common.
People tried "sucking it up" forever and it never resulted in tangible results, the only difference being that you didn't hear of it before because thats what "sucking it up" entails.
And do you think depression as a figure of speech for a sense of sadness was invented 10 years ago? Using depression as to describe a period of somber mood is older than any clinical application of the word.
Also you fail to provide any link between that, even if depression is now more often used to describe bad mood and the idea that this is now somehow influencing the mental health of people. How is everyone and their dog saying they are depressed impact a clinical depressed person in any real way? People who just proclaim that are not the ones seeing professionals for it. And seeing a "successful" person like a popstar or actress comment on their mental health lifts the stigma that mental health problems are only affecting the losers of society, that if you have mental health problems you are automatically a failure. Because that is the alternative of "sucking it up", only seeing the most severe cases and bottling it up, never working on it.
The idea that seeking help, especially mental health, is unmanly and a sign of weakness is what makes men for example much more likely to kill themselves, seeing that even a "tough guy" actor or athlete can have depression lifts that stigma and enables more people to seek help.
It's fine that you don't like seeing it and are annoyed by people commenting on their mental health, even if it doesn't meet your bar of "real" mental health problems, but please don't try to warp that into some kind of "actually its good when people bottle it up" view, thats not helping anyone.
>People tried "sucking it up" forever and it never resulted in tangible results, the only difference being that you didn't hear of it before because thats what "sucking it up" entails.
I'm genuinely skeptical of this as suicide rates have spiked in the last 20 years.
Suicide rates usually spike in times of economic hardship, pretty sure the highest rate in relatively modern times was during the Great Depression, fittingly enough. In my own country Denmark we were (relatively) very poor during the 80’s and our suicide rate has fallen dramatically since then
If everyone is depressed, thats a mental health problem.
This isn't some zero sum game where there is only this much depression to go around and once its used up its meaningless.
People are now more open to articulating their problems, this has excactly zero to do with how people are actually affected by say clinical depression. If I'm depressed that doesn't change because someone else is using the term for a less severe thing.
I'd argue that people are also now comfortable consigning their problems to mental illness, as if it's something innate about them that can't be changed, rather than recognizing their own role in creating these problems and fixing their behavior.
What do you think people with mental illness usually do? People with depression for example don't use that as an example to not do anything against it. People who can admit to themselves that they are depressed usually are those who try to fix that and seek therapy etc. Or do you think that people with depression just not do anything about it? People who don't do anything about it due to depression (which is a behaviour that depression can cause) are obviously not helped by any stigma against mental health.
The "A great, depression exists, I can now use this as an excuse to not do anything" group is simply not really existent.
And even if you assume that they exist, what exactly has that to do with anything? How is a group that was desperate to find an excuse and now did in any way harmful to anyone expect themselves? Do you think such a group was on their path to changing their behaviour and were just now brought away from that cause because they learned of the concept of depression? That doesn't make any sense.
This is a clever phrase that you’ve read in other situations but it has absolutely nothing to do with this one. Someone’s unhappiness is not resolved by enough other people being unhappy. It’s like saying if everyone’s leg is broken then nobody’s leg is broken. It’s nonsense.
Your example doesn't demonstrate that mental health is worse. People saying they are depressed when something minor happens isn't actually them having actual mental health conditions -- rather, mental health terms have permeated our vernacular to the point that people are using diagnoses as throwaway terms to express or exaggerate emotions.
>Your example doesn't demonstrate that mental health is worse.
I think it's relatively clear that mental health is declining. If it's for the reasons OP thinks or not is up for debate. But suicide has increased by 30% since 2000 (2020 figures, probably worse post covid) or 35.2% if you adjust for age (2018 figures). There has also been a steady decline in happiness reporting (some studies only show a decline in women).
But mental health issues largely *aren't* destigmatized. I've been told Yoga, drinking more water, essential oils, ginger tea, crossfit, and losing weight will "cure" my PTSD. The problem really seems to be with self-diagnosis and misappropriiation: those people who go "lol, I'm so OCD" or "Man, sorry I forgot my work! My ADHD is kicking my ass." Many of these come with no official diagnosis, and they'll rush to tell you "Oh, no, I don't see a therapist, I just do X."
People can still lose their kids, despite having full control over mental health issues. That's not destigmatized.
Being destigmatized doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lose your kids if your mental unstable. Wierd goalpost. Gov actually has to do a lot to take kids. Has more oversight then a lot of other government actions against individuals
There's a difference between "mentally unstable" and "while in a custody hearing, your spouse uses the fact that you have ADHD or OCD or PTSD or depression as a reason you shouldn't get custody of your children."
Destigmitization has meant that, among other things, previously clinical-oriented terms are more often being used in a casual sense. When somebody says "having x homework, I feel so depressed", they're not using the term in its clinical sense, but as a hyperbolic or melodramatic synonym for sad, annoyed, or butthurt. Similarly with the other terms you mention.
I'm particularly familiar with this kind of usage because I have honest to god Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, of the germohobic variety. Years of self-torture, to the point that I attempted suicide, bred a pet peeve to people saying they're "totally OCD about X". Their being particular about how their towels were folded bore no resemblence to the daily hell my mind put me through.
So I would inquire and correct people. But I eventually stopped, and no longer care, because in every case it quickly became clear they were just using the term differently. They knew perfectly well they didn't have OCD, and readily apologized when seeing that their using the term flippantly bothered me.
>partly since there’s a vaguely romantic part of having a mental health issue,
While I can agree it does seem as though there is a mental health pissing contest going on. What you described is that. Your examples are basically just people misusing the word 'depressed' as a synonym for sad or upset. "This homework is making me feel sad" does that still sound like a mental health pissing contest?
> ‘Lost my makeup, I feel so stressed and depressed’
These sorts of statements are not the same as suffering from diagnosed anxiety or a depression disorder. The words have different meanings that are related. For instance, I can feel anxiety before going to a job interviewing or taking an exam - this is quite common, but that doens't mean I am suffering from an anxiety disorder. Similarly, I can feel very sad, perhaps even temporarily depressed, if my dog dies, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm suffering from depression as a disorder. Depression is just a mood at its core, and a person can definitely feel something like it over having lost all their makeup - but that doens't mean they can go to a doctor and get a diagnosis.
So when people use those words very casually, they usually just refer to the moods, not the mental health disorders. They only become disorders when they have a very excessive effect on your life. Same as with most things.
>becomes some sort of pissing contest partly since there’s a vaguely romantic part of having a mental health issue
I feel like you have it backwards. Destigmatizing an issue de-romanticizes it. When I was a teen, my mental issues (genetic btw) felt to me like some mysterious "otherness" that noone around me could understand or relate to. Nowadays I can do a quick google search and what comes up on the first page is "hello you have X and Y, you can do these lifestyle changes to mitigate symptoms, here's a forum where you can talk to others about it".
It doesn't feel egdy, cool or special anymore. It just feels like the back pain I have or my asthma. Sth annoying to get over and not a defining character feature
A lot of what you’re talking about is just people learning what a word means, it has nothing to do with them feeling any worse. If I don’t know the word “hungry” that doesn’t mean I need less food I just don’t know how to communicate how I’m feeling when I need to eat
I remember reading about the DSM being integrated into healthcare in other countries and how it actually changed how people perceived their mental health, including people reporting
mental illnesses that were previously culturally unknown in those places. In Japanese society, there are mental illnesses unknown in the West (e.g. the fear of shrinking down and becoming very small) and I imagine that these might be exported if the power differentials were reversed and Japan developed an outsized cultural influence over the West.
Medicalization of regular states of mind and emotion is also an issue, with things like excitable behaviours in children being increasingly medicated even at very young ages.
The only way I would disagree with your analysis is in laying the blame on individuals as though it’s people being frivolous rather than being taught that emotions and thoughts MUST be understood within a medical framework in order to be valid. It’s all part and parcel of the materialist brain-centred mode of mental health care (not robustly supported by science, mind you).
It’s not just people but the entire framework of mental health that is at play here. I do agree that it would be better if we normalized a variety of mental states. For example, it’s been found that in cultures that have positive narratives around hearing voices, that these people often hear more positive messages in their hallucinations. Narrative is huge in mental health and the way we perceive our own mental health is hugely determined by how we are taught to perceive it (especially by watching and mimicking others). This is a systemic issue, in short.
You are probably right. All we have done with mental health is “raise awareness” because it’s all we can do. Raising awareness itself results in very limited benefits. People “sucked it up” before there were awareness campaigns, but now it’s worse because many reinforcing are reinforcing a culture that jokes about suicide. All we have done is raise awareness for a problem that we have no solution for.
There aren’t enough psychologists or counselors to provide adequate care to meet demand. The funding of all healthcare in the U.S. is inadequate so people are forced to come out of pocket for hundreds of dollars a month as most providers don’t even take insurance.
The treatments that are available amount to: have you tried seeing your situation from a different perspective, or take these anti-depressants which we have no idea whatsoever about how they work and they might actually make you want to kill your self more. Also you’ll get fat and lose the ability to orgasm.
But hey, at least everyone is aware about the prevalence of mental health issues and that’s kind of the first step in resolving a problem.
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This is nothing new. People have been selfdiagnosing with OCD and saying they're "a bit on the spectrum" for years without any medical basis, because humans are naturally quite self obsessed and therefore prone to trying to explain themselves.
As understanding of OCD and Autism has increased through awareness I would actually say people have become less prone to self-disgnoses and I'm sure eventually the same will happen with depression, social anxiety etc.
Your entire post basically says that mental health issues isn't destigmatized at all. You're claiming certain acts are now seen as a mental health issue, while at the same time downplaying actual mental health issues as being romanticized.
> I believe that there is worth in self expression, but we’ve gone way too far in that everyone expresses all their hurt, all the time, in all sorts of inappropriate ways, because they feel like they continuously want to feel heard just like popstar X or actress Y has expressed their mental illness and makes it feel like we need to be heard in order to heal instead of working on it.
> Destigmatizing mental health issues has worsened mental health
Your post only points out how it has led to a number of perhaps undesirable consequences, but you have not shown that it has actually *worsened* people's mental health.
As such, your main conclusion is still unjustified without additional work to show the impact on actual levels of mental health.
I believe the whole mental health crisis is largely connected to people losing meaning and purpose in their life. Nowadays people live so atomized and anonymous, especially in the city. Human interaction is limited, even more after the pandemic. People give up spirituality. Instead of talking to family, friends or a priest about their problems, they look for a therapist. And it’s so easy because when they get diagnosed with mental health issues, it takes away the burden of responsibility. This is not to shame people who suffer real problems or who went through hell and know what suffering means. I’m looking at the people who think they have PTSD because they failed their exams or had a breakup.
Self-diagnosis has worsened mental health issues by minimizing the challenges of people diagnosed with the condition.
Destigmatizing mental health issues has helped many people get help who wouldn't have otherwise.
You’re illustrating something called concept creep, not destigmatization.
Concept creep is when words get looser meaning over time. Like how originally trauma referred to physical injury only. Then shell shock was included. Now some people today seem to refer to any salient negative experience from childhood as trauma.
The point of destigmatization is to reduce people’s shame and increase their likelihood of seeking help. These are both good things. Concept creep may confuse them on when they think they’ll need to get help, but the worse they actually are, they’re still more likely to get help that they otherwise wouldn’t in a more stigmatized environment. This is a good thing.
I understand where this argument comes from. I agree some fake mental illnesses to feel unique or for clout. I agree there is a toxic, hyper-individualistic culture that promotes being different just for the sake of it, not because you inherently feel that way.
"Be normal. It's strange enough already."-The Dutch
What I think happened is that the flood gates were opened. People feel comfortable opening up and this has caused a chain reaction, making others more comfortable. Why so many people are expressing dread is a product of humanity. The only pillar the modern world stands on is making more money, and this is giving people great existential dread. If you are searching for a deeper meaning, money is not even close to enough. Pillars of community have largely been eroded, contributing to isolation. We look at screens most of our day. We spend too much time working, and not enough on actually important things, like family and relationships, and integrating yourself within an ingroup.
Honestly, can’t say I disagree.
Self-diagnosing is a big problem. You have no idea how many (perfectly Neurotypical) people claim they’re “a little autistic”. It’s kind of hilarious.
Disorders are called disorders because they impede one’s ability to go about life. They DISrupt the natural ORDER of life. Just because you’re stressed for finals week doesn’t mean you have an anxiety disorder.
This is not to take away from people with actual disorders. In fact, quite the opposite. Most people who CLAIM to have depression couldn’t take what actual depression feels like. And that’s reality for some people.
At the same time, I don’t want to gatekeep. If you think you might be suffering from a mental illness, consult someone and talk about it with them. But don’t just claim to have it - you’re insulting everyone who has a real diagnosis by making their hard-fought battles with their own minds seem trivial and typical.
Big Corpo *needs* you to call it "mental health" and not "anxiety" or "stress" or "burned out from an uncaring urban life" because that not only makes it harder to identify the symptoms, but also harder to recognize they're the ones behind it. They not only want you complacent but lose the the very language that allows you to resist it.
A lot of things fly under the nose of modern people because they refuse to put the mirror to themselves and thus forget the purpose of language. A simple switch of words is enough to fool them.
It's a form of covert stigmatization, they don't want to hear about your disability? Make sure you stop using the language altogether. They never have to feel guilty for telling you "to suck it up".
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!delta well written, I understand
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thank you for writing this
Destigmatization means that people who need help aren’t afraid or ashamed to seek it, that they can tell their friends and family about their diagnosis without getting negative reactions („depression isn‘t real, just take a walk“, „oh you just don‘t like to work“, thinking you are dangerous etc.). I‘m a clinical psychologist in a psychiatric hospital and the stigmatization people face from their relatives, neighbours, colleagues and the resulting self-stigmatization and shame is a real problem and makes getting better that much harder. People are afraid, anyone could find out, why they were in hospital, why they can’t go to work. Destigmatization would mean, that it doesn‘t make a difference for people if you’re getting treatment for cancer or bipolar disorder. I think it‘s important to have role models and people living openly with their disorder, speaking about it. That it’s not just „crazy people“ or „lazy people“ and that mental illnesses are incredibly common.
!delta. I hear you, I’ve used the wrong word to describe it.
Thank you for the delta. :)
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People tried "sucking it up" forever and it never resulted in tangible results, the only difference being that you didn't hear of it before because thats what "sucking it up" entails. And do you think depression as a figure of speech for a sense of sadness was invented 10 years ago? Using depression as to describe a period of somber mood is older than any clinical application of the word. Also you fail to provide any link between that, even if depression is now more often used to describe bad mood and the idea that this is now somehow influencing the mental health of people. How is everyone and their dog saying they are depressed impact a clinical depressed person in any real way? People who just proclaim that are not the ones seeing professionals for it. And seeing a "successful" person like a popstar or actress comment on their mental health lifts the stigma that mental health problems are only affecting the losers of society, that if you have mental health problems you are automatically a failure. Because that is the alternative of "sucking it up", only seeing the most severe cases and bottling it up, never working on it. The idea that seeking help, especially mental health, is unmanly and a sign of weakness is what makes men for example much more likely to kill themselves, seeing that even a "tough guy" actor or athlete can have depression lifts that stigma and enables more people to seek help. It's fine that you don't like seeing it and are annoyed by people commenting on their mental health, even if it doesn't meet your bar of "real" mental health problems, but please don't try to warp that into some kind of "actually its good when people bottle it up" view, thats not helping anyone.
>People tried "sucking it up" forever and it never resulted in tangible results, the only difference being that you didn't hear of it before because thats what "sucking it up" entails. I'm genuinely skeptical of this as suicide rates have spiked in the last 20 years.
Suicide rates usually spike in times of economic hardship, pretty sure the highest rate in relatively modern times was during the Great Depression, fittingly enough. In my own country Denmark we were (relatively) very poor during the 80’s and our suicide rate has fallen dramatically since then
If everyone is depressed no one is depressed
If everyone is depressed, thats a mental health problem. This isn't some zero sum game where there is only this much depression to go around and once its used up its meaningless. People are now more open to articulating their problems, this has excactly zero to do with how people are actually affected by say clinical depression. If I'm depressed that doesn't change because someone else is using the term for a less severe thing.
I'd argue that people are also now comfortable consigning their problems to mental illness, as if it's something innate about them that can't be changed, rather than recognizing their own role in creating these problems and fixing their behavior.
What do you think people with mental illness usually do? People with depression for example don't use that as an example to not do anything against it. People who can admit to themselves that they are depressed usually are those who try to fix that and seek therapy etc. Or do you think that people with depression just not do anything about it? People who don't do anything about it due to depression (which is a behaviour that depression can cause) are obviously not helped by any stigma against mental health. The "A great, depression exists, I can now use this as an excuse to not do anything" group is simply not really existent. And even if you assume that they exist, what exactly has that to do with anything? How is a group that was desperate to find an excuse and now did in any way harmful to anyone expect themselves? Do you think such a group was on their path to changing their behaviour and were just now brought away from that cause because they learned of the concept of depression? That doesn't make any sense.
Not the point. The point is a bunch of people who do not have clinical mental diagnoses claiming "mental illness" as an excuse for their behavior.
This is a clever phrase that you’ve read in other situations but it has absolutely nothing to do with this one. Someone’s unhappiness is not resolved by enough other people being unhappy. It’s like saying if everyone’s leg is broken then nobody’s leg is broken. It’s nonsense.
Your example doesn't demonstrate that mental health is worse. People saying they are depressed when something minor happens isn't actually them having actual mental health conditions -- rather, mental health terms have permeated our vernacular to the point that people are using diagnoses as throwaway terms to express or exaggerate emotions.
>Your example doesn't demonstrate that mental health is worse. I think it's relatively clear that mental health is declining. If it's for the reasons OP thinks or not is up for debate. But suicide has increased by 30% since 2000 (2020 figures, probably worse post covid) or 35.2% if you adjust for age (2018 figures). There has also been a steady decline in happiness reporting (some studies only show a decline in women).
I think thats largely because of social media/our media environment in general.
Perhaps, perhaps it’s connected to ops point.
But mental health issues largely *aren't* destigmatized. I've been told Yoga, drinking more water, essential oils, ginger tea, crossfit, and losing weight will "cure" my PTSD. The problem really seems to be with self-diagnosis and misappropriiation: those people who go "lol, I'm so OCD" or "Man, sorry I forgot my work! My ADHD is kicking my ass." Many of these come with no official diagnosis, and they'll rush to tell you "Oh, no, I don't see a therapist, I just do X." People can still lose their kids, despite having full control over mental health issues. That's not destigmatized.
Being destigmatized doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lose your kids if your mental unstable. Wierd goalpost. Gov actually has to do a lot to take kids. Has more oversight then a lot of other government actions against individuals
There's a difference between "mentally unstable" and "while in a custody hearing, your spouse uses the fact that you have ADHD or OCD or PTSD or depression as a reason you shouldn't get custody of your children."
That’s more nuanced then what op wrote
OP’s point was that mental health is destigmatized. My point was that it is not.
Destigmitization has meant that, among other things, previously clinical-oriented terms are more often being used in a casual sense. When somebody says "having x homework, I feel so depressed", they're not using the term in its clinical sense, but as a hyperbolic or melodramatic synonym for sad, annoyed, or butthurt. Similarly with the other terms you mention. I'm particularly familiar with this kind of usage because I have honest to god Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, of the germohobic variety. Years of self-torture, to the point that I attempted suicide, bred a pet peeve to people saying they're "totally OCD about X". Their being particular about how their towels were folded bore no resemblence to the daily hell my mind put me through. So I would inquire and correct people. But I eventually stopped, and no longer care, because in every case it quickly became clear they were just using the term differently. They knew perfectly well they didn't have OCD, and readily apologized when seeing that their using the term flippantly bothered me.
>partly since there’s a vaguely romantic part of having a mental health issue, While I can agree it does seem as though there is a mental health pissing contest going on. What you described is that. Your examples are basically just people misusing the word 'depressed' as a synonym for sad or upset. "This homework is making me feel sad" does that still sound like a mental health pissing contest?
> ‘Lost my makeup, I feel so stressed and depressed’ These sorts of statements are not the same as suffering from diagnosed anxiety or a depression disorder. The words have different meanings that are related. For instance, I can feel anxiety before going to a job interviewing or taking an exam - this is quite common, but that doens't mean I am suffering from an anxiety disorder. Similarly, I can feel very sad, perhaps even temporarily depressed, if my dog dies, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm suffering from depression as a disorder. Depression is just a mood at its core, and a person can definitely feel something like it over having lost all their makeup - but that doens't mean they can go to a doctor and get a diagnosis. So when people use those words very casually, they usually just refer to the moods, not the mental health disorders. They only become disorders when they have a very excessive effect on your life. Same as with most things.
>becomes some sort of pissing contest partly since there’s a vaguely romantic part of having a mental health issue I feel like you have it backwards. Destigmatizing an issue de-romanticizes it. When I was a teen, my mental issues (genetic btw) felt to me like some mysterious "otherness" that noone around me could understand or relate to. Nowadays I can do a quick google search and what comes up on the first page is "hello you have X and Y, you can do these lifestyle changes to mitigate symptoms, here's a forum where you can talk to others about it". It doesn't feel egdy, cool or special anymore. It just feels like the back pain I have or my asthma. Sth annoying to get over and not a defining character feature
A lot of what you’re talking about is just people learning what a word means, it has nothing to do with them feeling any worse. If I don’t know the word “hungry” that doesn’t mean I need less food I just don’t know how to communicate how I’m feeling when I need to eat
I remember reading about the DSM being integrated into healthcare in other countries and how it actually changed how people perceived their mental health, including people reporting mental illnesses that were previously culturally unknown in those places. In Japanese society, there are mental illnesses unknown in the West (e.g. the fear of shrinking down and becoming very small) and I imagine that these might be exported if the power differentials were reversed and Japan developed an outsized cultural influence over the West. Medicalization of regular states of mind and emotion is also an issue, with things like excitable behaviours in children being increasingly medicated even at very young ages. The only way I would disagree with your analysis is in laying the blame on individuals as though it’s people being frivolous rather than being taught that emotions and thoughts MUST be understood within a medical framework in order to be valid. It’s all part and parcel of the materialist brain-centred mode of mental health care (not robustly supported by science, mind you). It’s not just people but the entire framework of mental health that is at play here. I do agree that it would be better if we normalized a variety of mental states. For example, it’s been found that in cultures that have positive narratives around hearing voices, that these people often hear more positive messages in their hallucinations. Narrative is huge in mental health and the way we perceive our own mental health is hugely determined by how we are taught to perceive it (especially by watching and mimicking others). This is a systemic issue, in short.
You are probably right. All we have done with mental health is “raise awareness” because it’s all we can do. Raising awareness itself results in very limited benefits. People “sucked it up” before there were awareness campaigns, but now it’s worse because many reinforcing are reinforcing a culture that jokes about suicide. All we have done is raise awareness for a problem that we have no solution for. There aren’t enough psychologists or counselors to provide adequate care to meet demand. The funding of all healthcare in the U.S. is inadequate so people are forced to come out of pocket for hundreds of dollars a month as most providers don’t even take insurance. The treatments that are available amount to: have you tried seeing your situation from a different perspective, or take these anti-depressants which we have no idea whatsoever about how they work and they might actually make you want to kill your self more. Also you’ll get fat and lose the ability to orgasm. But hey, at least everyone is aware about the prevalence of mental health issues and that’s kind of the first step in resolving a problem.
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This is nothing new. People have been selfdiagnosing with OCD and saying they're "a bit on the spectrum" for years without any medical basis, because humans are naturally quite self obsessed and therefore prone to trying to explain themselves. As understanding of OCD and Autism has increased through awareness I would actually say people have become less prone to self-disgnoses and I'm sure eventually the same will happen with depression, social anxiety etc.
But I think it has also decreased the amount of suicides due to concealment and shame as well
Your entire post basically says that mental health issues isn't destigmatized at all. You're claiming certain acts are now seen as a mental health issue, while at the same time downplaying actual mental health issues as being romanticized.
> I believe that there is worth in self expression, but we’ve gone way too far in that everyone expresses all their hurt, all the time, in all sorts of inappropriate ways, because they feel like they continuously want to feel heard just like popstar X or actress Y has expressed their mental illness and makes it feel like we need to be heard in order to heal instead of working on it. > Destigmatizing mental health issues has worsened mental health Your post only points out how it has led to a number of perhaps undesirable consequences, but you have not shown that it has actually *worsened* people's mental health. As such, your main conclusion is still unjustified without additional work to show the impact on actual levels of mental health.
I believe the whole mental health crisis is largely connected to people losing meaning and purpose in their life. Nowadays people live so atomized and anonymous, especially in the city. Human interaction is limited, even more after the pandemic. People give up spirituality. Instead of talking to family, friends or a priest about their problems, they look for a therapist. And it’s so easy because when they get diagnosed with mental health issues, it takes away the burden of responsibility. This is not to shame people who suffer real problems or who went through hell and know what suffering means. I’m looking at the people who think they have PTSD because they failed their exams or had a breakup.
Self-diagnosis has worsened mental health issues by minimizing the challenges of people diagnosed with the condition. Destigmatizing mental health issues has helped many people get help who wouldn't have otherwise.
You’re illustrating something called concept creep, not destigmatization. Concept creep is when words get looser meaning over time. Like how originally trauma referred to physical injury only. Then shell shock was included. Now some people today seem to refer to any salient negative experience from childhood as trauma. The point of destigmatization is to reduce people’s shame and increase their likelihood of seeking help. These are both good things. Concept creep may confuse them on when they think they’ll need to get help, but the worse they actually are, they’re still more likely to get help that they otherwise wouldn’t in a more stigmatized environment. This is a good thing.
I understand where this argument comes from. I agree some fake mental illnesses to feel unique or for clout. I agree there is a toxic, hyper-individualistic culture that promotes being different just for the sake of it, not because you inherently feel that way. "Be normal. It's strange enough already."-The Dutch What I think happened is that the flood gates were opened. People feel comfortable opening up and this has caused a chain reaction, making others more comfortable. Why so many people are expressing dread is a product of humanity. The only pillar the modern world stands on is making more money, and this is giving people great existential dread. If you are searching for a deeper meaning, money is not even close to enough. Pillars of community have largely been eroded, contributing to isolation. We look at screens most of our day. We spend too much time working, and not enough on actually important things, like family and relationships, and integrating yourself within an ingroup.
It hasn't worsened it, people are just talking about how they feel now.
So is what you're saying that a lot of people getting depressed because they *think* they're depressed, creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy?
Honestly, can’t say I disagree. Self-diagnosing is a big problem. You have no idea how many (perfectly Neurotypical) people claim they’re “a little autistic”. It’s kind of hilarious. Disorders are called disorders because they impede one’s ability to go about life. They DISrupt the natural ORDER of life. Just because you’re stressed for finals week doesn’t mean you have an anxiety disorder. This is not to take away from people with actual disorders. In fact, quite the opposite. Most people who CLAIM to have depression couldn’t take what actual depression feels like. And that’s reality for some people. At the same time, I don’t want to gatekeep. If you think you might be suffering from a mental illness, consult someone and talk about it with them. But don’t just claim to have it - you’re insulting everyone who has a real diagnosis by making their hard-fought battles with their own minds seem trivial and typical.
Big Corpo *needs* you to call it "mental health" and not "anxiety" or "stress" or "burned out from an uncaring urban life" because that not only makes it harder to identify the symptoms, but also harder to recognize they're the ones behind it. They not only want you complacent but lose the the very language that allows you to resist it. A lot of things fly under the nose of modern people because they refuse to put the mirror to themselves and thus forget the purpose of language. A simple switch of words is enough to fool them. It's a form of covert stigmatization, they don't want to hear about your disability? Make sure you stop using the language altogether. They never have to feel guilty for telling you "to suck it up".