Are Mental Illnesses Being Glorified on Social Media?
By Draven St.George
While social media may be good for spreading awareness for mental illness and providing a comforting home for those who feel left out, social media has seemed to turn into a designated club where symptoms and issues are being exemplified and glorified. As much as social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Twitter try to bring light to those in dark places, these places can be just as toxic. This toxicity shows how mental illnesses can be incorrectly diagnosed and divided, causing gatekeeping and glorification.
The biggest issue that needs to be addressed and resolved is the inconsistencies with self-diagnosis. It’s obvious; people love to have self-reassurance and security through the affirmations and beliefs of others which they then project onto themselves. However, with people on social media making “Day in the Life of…” or “What it’s like to be a….” in an attempt to explain their mental illness, this can sometimes cause people to give themselves an unofficial diagnosis in an attempt to stamp a label on what could be going on with their mental state. While it should be said that diagnosis is the first step in controlling your unknown concerns, the practice of self-treatment without medical or psychological aid can lead to false diagnosis and the false spread of information.
For example, what do you hear when you think of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Typically, the first thoughts that arise in someone’s head are someone rearranging the pens on their desk to go in rainbow order, or the need to pop every knuckle in order from pinky to thumb. This false idea of OCD being control freaks and pattern-organized isn’t true at all, as that could just be one of the thousands of layers of a person with OCD. With people diagnosing themselves with OCD based on a neat-freak personality or a perfectionist attitude, it could cause worry even more than it could cause reassurance.
Another aspect on the topic of the confusion of mental illness is the idea of gatekeeping among communities. As much as you see people loosely interpreting mental illness on social media, you also see people overinterpreting mental illness. What that means is that people have their specific idea of what mental illness is and what mental illness does. This idea of specifying your symptoms as the guaranteed truth just because of your medical diagnosis can do just as much damage as someone who loosely diagnoses themself as having a mental illness.
For example, the topic of panic attacks has been tossed around for years now (specifically what happens during one and who can specifically get one). But the thing is that people’s bodies and minds all work differently; it’s the psychology of it all. Some people’s panic attacks can range from very serious breathing problems and uncontrollable emotions to high pressure in the chest and the loss of thought. Another misconception is the idea that panic attacks are a mental illness themselves, although everyone gets them and everyone reacts to them differently. So, when people on social media treat panic attacks as something rare and uncontrollable, that can put fear and stress into someone’s head.
The issue with the expression of mental illness is that some view it as a double-edged sword. It seems to be that you can’t try to think of yourself as having a mental illness, but you also can’t try to express that you have a mental illness. However, that is not the case. There simply needs to be boundaries set in order to safely and effectively spread awareness on social media. It takes a healthy combination of medical diagnosis, clear control of your information, and the ability to remain open about your understanding; nobody can truly understand the complexity of every mental illness.
Works Cited
@laura_werner81, L. (2017, July 27). Werner: Mental health disorders shouldn't be glorified on social media. Retrieved October 05, 2020, from https://www.kansan.com/opinion/werner-mental-health-disorders-shouldn-t-be-glorified-on-social/article_d91f2fa6-7000-11e7-aaa2-eb19937d2278.html
“How Heavy Use of Social Media Is Linked to Mental Illness.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/05/18/how-heavy-use-of-social-media-is-linked-to-mental-illness.