“My parents did not get me my favorite dress and I am so depressed about it”
“I am having a panic attack right now”
“She is a total psycho. I bet she is schizophrenic”
“Please set those cushions properly. I have OCD (chuckles)”
Where did we go wrong?
In our efforts to destigmatize mental health, we ended up “over normalizing” the mental health disorders, and unfortunately started throwing these terms so casually. On one hand, where it must be acknowledged that mental health is not a taboo and one should not feel ashamed when seeking help, it must be remembered that normal and carefree use of the terms like “depression”, “anxiety”, “hallucinations” etc. undermines the gravity of these disorders and illnesses. Sadness does not always mean depression. Mood swings do not necessarily suggest that someone is bipolar. Liking cleanliness and sorted stuff does not reflect that someone has OCD. Labelling someone or even yourself with such terms mirror the language catastrophe that Gen Z is experiencing, and to be honest this hold severe consequences thus it should be condoned and addressed by the mental health doctors.
People now a days indulge so much into this field of psychiatry that one day they google about narcissism or imposter syndrome, and next day they will stand up and label someone as a narcissist or give some other form of mental health diagnosis without having any expertise in that field. Overuse of these terms further stigmatizes the issue of mental wellbeing and creates stereotypes. The prejudice, which stems from these stereotypes, gives birth to the animosity, hatred and fear in the society. Someone who is actually struggling due to clinical depression will feel invalidated and hurt when people around him start labelling mere sadness as depression. Excessive use of these terms in our everyday lives just dilutes the true meaning of severity of a disorder and it gets associated to more simpler and short-lived experiences. It is definitely not ok to normalize an illness- but talking about an illness to support someone or create awareness is something that should be normalized. We should not be so frivolous about something as distressing and life threatening as poor mental health.
Are the consequences that bad?
Just imagine if we would say that someone has cancer just because they are a bit sick or stay in bed all day? No, of course we would not, but then just because mental health is invisible how can we associate a slight similarity in someone’s behavior with that of a mental health patient? This not only hurts the sentiments of that individual, but also of those who have been diagnosed with that certain illness because the negative notion attached to that term penetrates that patient’s mind who is already struggling with his life.
Emotions are meant to be shared. It is important to let yourself out. To express. But we must be careful about the language that we use, rather than speaking out the psychological jargon and maybe over exaggerating our emotions. This way of expression might or might not cripple you, but it does reflect an unintentional (or maybe deliberate) expression of lack of empathy for your fellows actually fighting every day to overcome these illnesses and survive.
However, as I mentioned above that associating slight changes of your emotions to mental illnesses might or might not impact you. It must be remembered that our cognition is our greatest strength. It determines a lot about our lives. Most importantly it becomes what we feed it. If we constantly exaggerate our emotions i.e terming sadness or depression, or labelling our indecisiveness as bipolar disorder, we might actually develop these disorders because of keeping ourselves in a bubble of negativity; we start getting hopeless about ourselves, then our future and, thus we end up believing that nothing can go right in our lives and the entire universe is conspiring against us.
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