How many times have you heard someone use a mental illness as a way to describe their mood?
Every day I seem to hear more and more people use the names of different mental illnesses to describe something. Whether it is someone's mood or even their day at work, I hear people substitute words like sad with depressed – but depression is not just feeling sad, there is much more to it and that is the problem. It could be anxiety, PTSD or bipolar disorder which are all illnesses/conditions of the brain and they should not be used in conversation so carelessly. The brain is an organ and no-one would use other organ illnesses, like the heart or the liver, in this sense – so why do some people do it with the brain?
I do think that most people who use these terms casually do not actually understand the weight behind them. But, by consistently using this terminology as a way to describe things, they are actually desensitising people to what mental illnesses actually are.
When influencers on social media platforms, like TikTok or Instagram, use these terms in trivial ways, I think of the number of impressionable children on these sites that will begin to build up false ideas of different mental illnesses.
Anxiety is not just feeling a bit nervous and bipolar disorder does not just mean you have had a slight mood change in the day. So, by being constantly exposed to wrong definitions like these of what mental illnesses are, vulnerable people may become influenced and begin to relate to these incorrect representations.
This can lead to self-diagnosis, which is dangerous and can actually cause more issues. If a person convinces themselves that they have problem, then they could possibly become more stressed and worried and try to treat themselves for issues that they do not have.
On top of this, people that actually have these illnesses may feel as if their real struggles are being belittled when people misrepresent and trivialise these issues.
So, whilst I understand that it is important to bring awareness to mental health issues and normalise a topic that is sometimes overlooked, it needs to be done in the right way and with care and consideration. Without that people may cause more harm than they intend. And so, the first thing that people need to realise, is that mental illnesses are not adjectives.
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