To wonder why everyone suddenly has a mental health issue?

[VogueVVague]

Dont get me wrong, im not talking about people who have struggled with long term clinical depression, schizophrenia etc.

But it seems like everyone now has some form of mental issue.

Hey, as a teenager and young adult i was a freaking mess, a teenage runaway, drugs, alcohol, confusing feelings, rage, destruction, depression, fear, shyness sometimes, anxiety. Just thought it was a normal part of transitioning.

Now as a fully formed adult some things still make me feel anxious, mny times i do feel unmotivated, depressed on a kind of existential level, sometimes nervous, sometimes not wanting to do something because it involves big gatherings or lots of strangers, which lets face it, can be awkard and uncomfortable for most people.

Isnt that just life and being human?
It feels like i meet so many people who "have" anxiety or borderline or bipolar. Especially teens. Arent they just experiencing adolescence?

Is social media making us believe the normal default is "happy and relaxed", when thats just one setting and humans are actually also designed to be down or nervous sometimes too?

public discourse at the moment seems to be much more - I have this mental ill health and that is the way it is

That could be down to the lack of availability of mental health treatment. People can reach a point where there is little they can do other than just survive, some NEED professional support in-order to get better/ help themselves.

Yes agree that some need professional support. For others though there is advice online that they could implement with the support of families and friends.

I haven't rtft (sorry) but I disagree with a lot in the op

1. it's very unlikely for any teens to be formally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I was diagnosed at 17 and that is very you d to have the diagnosis. And new diagnoses are now 'emotionally unstable personality disorder' as opposed to borderline.

2. borderline is not trendy. Not one little bit. I can't remember the last time I told someone, other than a medical professional, about it. Years ago I guess.

3. depression isn't trendy either. Far far from it. And I can't remember the last time I told anybody that I suffer from depression either. I tell people that I have autism as I do d that has less stigma.

4. The way that MH conditions are misunderstood and then used in everyday conversation is making it seem like there are more of the people around. "I like to clear the worktops before eating dinner, I'm so OCD about it" would be a prime example. This person clearly has no idea what OCD actually is, and is minimising the condition.

And yes maybe it is "trendy" to appear slightly mentally unwell. But having a MH problem that interferes with your life is shit. Not trendy. And basically the thing I hate most about myself

I might refer to myself on MN as having anxiety. I do. I have an ongoing battle with panic attacks etc but I cope in most situations and given some of the situations I've faced it seems a state of high alert waiting for the next thing isn't unreasonable.
I also mention my ASD. Diagnosed and explains a lot including the above.
What I don't really talk about is the OCD. Again diagnosed. It's quite bizarre so I won't go into details but it controls my life. I have distressing intrusive thoughts. I cannot do routine things. The compulsive element is terrifying.
Ironically I'm not depressed. I've been fed up or really sad and had GPs or consultants (physical health) suggest I need ADs.
So years ago I was the odd kid being picked on and if I was 30 years older I'd have spent my 40s on valium. It was all there but hidden away.

Surely people who are able to help themselves do though crunchy? It’s just common sense to try to find your own solution.

I agree that we expect to be happy 100% Of the time

And I think MH is an issue that’s been under diagnosed to date

So both Really

I lost my father when I was 18, and a month later, went to university.

About a year later, I COMPLETELY LOST MY SH*T, and was given a diagnosis of depression and ADs by the student health service.

I remember walking down the street about six months later, thinking: 'This is odd. I have NO feelings. None at all.'

I wasn't happy, I wasn't sad, I was neither content or ill at ease. I was completely numb.

(I stopped taking the ADs immediately, which, with hindsight, I wouldn't recommend).

Interestingly, some years later, at the age of 31, I was formally diagnosed (by the NHS, no less!) with Asperger's Syndrome. I function and process things differently, according to SCIENCE.

So was I depressed? Probably not, I was probably just sad, and grieving, and massively overwrought and over-stimulated, given the life-changing events I had experienced at a young age, which would have been tricky for a neurotypical, never mind a person with an ASD.

I still have days when I get very overwrought, or the 'black dog' moves in for a couple of days/weeks, but I don't think I'm depressed, I just think it's a part of me, and I'm fortunate now that I'm old enough and smart enough to have figured out the coping strategies for me.

However, I'm not sure that I can comment on MH in the general population, because it is (unless you are an experienced mental health professional) a subjective issue.

I dunno. I know I HAVE mental health issues. Quite a few of them. Fuck all that can be done about any of it though, so I broadly err on the it's just being a human side. I am what I am, as is everyone else. Everybody has their differences.

People have always had their oddities. My grandad gave up a career due to anxiety over public speaking. He was mostly just viewed as a bit of an eccentric. I think it's a good thing people talk about it more, means you can see when people maybe need a bit more support rather than thinking they're a git. People are just more open about their issues now.

I wonder if I approach my mental health wrong or right or just different to how it's portrayed in the media. I see it like a physical illness - I go through a few months of being unwell, do what I can to fight it (rest, medicate, do my "exercises", see specialists and engage in suitable therapies) then when I am over that bout I think no more of it. I've noticed a lot of people on Tumblr Reddit social media in general seem to get a diagnosis and hold onto it as a defining characteristic of their personality.

For instance i would say: I am bumpowder and happen to have periods of being mentally unwell with anxiety, depression and OCD. Whereas you may read: I'm tumblrina and I am an anxious and depressed person who obsesses over everything and can't cope with it.

I'm not saying my approach is right and theirs is wrong but there does seem to be 2 schools of thought and the latter very much at the forefront.

The lines between what's normal and abnormal can get blurry, though. A lot of the trauma related stuff I've had to read and work through actually suggest that most of the kinds of symptoms I (and others with C-PTSD issues) are not an illness as such but a normal human reaction to things.

It's normal and healthy to develop coping strategies to stuff going on in your life, and especially when you're young and can't physically just leave a bad situation, they're not always going to be "healthy", or look "normal". And it's normal for people to stick to already developed strategies in the future, when other life stress happens, even if the original bad stuff has passed, if you don't get proper support to find your way out of old patterns and learn better ones.

This has actually been quite a liberating way of approaching it for me. It's much harder to live with the concept of a "disordered personality" and various diagnoses that make you feel you're altogether faulty, than to see how it was actually quite logical (and very creative, sometimes) that the symptoms came to be, and while they might not all be completely reversible, there are always ways to learn, improve and adapt again.

my ds was told he would have been classed as eccentric back in the day , they dont use the term now.

I think it's silly to say that mental illness labels aren't ever used for attention or glamorised, especially by young or insecure people. Of course they can be and are. Yes, diagnoses are hard to get but you don't need a diagnosis to say you have something. You just say it. And most people would then assume you are telling the truth. Most people self diagnosing probably believe they are telling the truth too.

But I think we need to be wary of blaming or dismissing people who do this. Attention seeking is in itself an indicator of poor mental health (not saying it's a mental illbess). As is the perception if mental illness as trendy or glamarous. People who are secure and happy in themselves just don't think or behave like that. We already know that teenagers are becoming increasingly more unhappy and insecure than previous generations.

Therefore a rise in both actual mental illness and perceived mental illness is very logical and perhaps inevitable.

It's also difficult to ignore the fact that the attention seeking often works. I have been anorexic since I was 15. I don't really know the initial trigger but the reaction I got at school did, in an insecure self loathing teenage mind, entrench the illness. I was never in the popular group, often felt excluded, marginalised or invisible. I was often alone. But when I got really ill I was interesting. Lots of people wanted to talk to me (or about me!) and it was easy to confuse the attention as friendship and popularity. Being I'll suddenly seemed like a way to stand out and be recognised. I'm not proud of that but I very much doubt it's a unique teenage experience.

Many people with poor mental health also want people to lean on, look after them and support them. They might lack the skills to attract or ask for what they need in an appropriate manner. Exaggerating or even inventing mental illness can happen in that situation.

Anyone watching The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs? I wonder what alt. treatment he'll try for the depressed teen.

YABVU and very ignorant, OP.

The difference between just feeling shy or sad and when it becomes a mental health issue is when it impacts on your daily life and your ability to function.

For example, someone with social anxiety disorder is not just shy. Every single social interaction from the small (just a look) to the large (a party or a speech) induces a fight or flight response within their body, causing them umpteen symptoms that they have to deal with. If you’re just shy, you don’t feel that.

Another example, someone with depression is not just sad. They struggle to get out of bed in the morning and to cope with everyday tasks like showering and teeth brushing. If you’re just sad, you don’t feel that.

It’s all to do with severity and how it impacts on your functionality as a human being.

lljkk yes I'm going with mindfulness, CBT and staying the hell away from sertraline!

Another example, someone with depression is not just sad. They struggle to get out of bed in the morning and to cope with everyday tasks like showering and teeth brushing. If you’re just sad, you don’t feel that.

That's my point earlier. I wouldn't describe myself as having depression because I'm not like that. I am just sad. Because I've had a lot of bereavement and health shit and so have had stuff to be sad about. But after 2 years of feeling permanently sad, and not really remembering how to feel happy, whilst also doing weekly grief counselling, meditation etc, my coping strategies were pretty worn out. So on my medical records it'll presumably say 'depression' because of a course of sertraline (which I intend to come off in due course) - which has been an amazing additional tool, and helped me to remember how to feel happy, to enable all the other stuff to actually make a difference.

So I wouldn't have said I had depression either, because I was always able to function. I was just sad. But never not sad for about 2 years, until I went to the GP and started the ADs. So not sure really what I'd call it. Feeling depressed rather than suffering from depression?

Hi again Bumpowder. Actually, I want to call you Snot if that's okay!

The way you view your own health is entirely valid, of course, and I suppose that by the same token so is everyone else's; however, I have to say I think I know what you mean about some people choosing to take a different approach. One that probably doesn't help them, and distorts other people's notions of mental illnesses vs poor or inconsistent mental well-being.

But maybe people would look at me and think I have decided to define myself by my diagnoses, having suffered with OCD and more for more than 30 years, with things becoming progressively more complex and disabling, and languishing in supported housing with no friends or job. Most of my OCD behaviour is tied into deeply entrenched, borderline psychotic ideation about the safety of the food and water supply in the UK, and no treatment has made a dent in it so far. But my depression and other elements of my OCD (intrusive thoughts and checking/counting things) wax and wane and when I am going through a patch less affected by them I am more than happy to let them go for a while and make the most of some parts of my life being a bit easier. So I hope I'm not a tumblrina! (have never even signed up to Tumblr or Reddit, but they are the sites I was thinking of earlier)

BumpowderSneezeonAndSnot When I had severe social anxiety disorder (I am thankfully recovered now after an intense course of CBT a few years ago), it never went away, ever.

I didn’t “hold onto it”. I didn’t even have a diagnosis for the first year. I just couldn’t leave my house alone and when I did go out it was absolutely horrendous. I was not even safe in my own home because of the possibility of the phone ringing or someone knocking on the door (neither of which I ever answered).

It was constant, 24/7, for years. I lost years of my life to it and was on high alert every second of every minute of every day.

@goodness, thank you for explaining. Apologies for getting it wrong, I'm autistic and don't always 'get it'.

I didn't say my way is right just that I had made an observation. For me by treating it as an illness not as part of me helped my recovery. It doesn't work for everyone.

Actually the rates of mental illness are up, contrary to what some posters are claiming. Predicted to peak in 2020. There are so many reasons for this which include trends in diet, exercise, sleep, housing, use of technology, ageing populations, split families to name but a few.

Is it a proportionate increase or just an increase in numbers?

BumpowderSneezeonAndSnot But if it keeps coming back (especially as frequently as every few months), you haven’t recovered.

manicinsomniac really interesting post and I agree with lots of it. But I do think that the people with poor mental well-being exaggerating their conditions and hinting at or outright making up diagnoses that do not apply to them can be harmful and frankly insulting to people who do suffer from psychiatric disorders at a more severe level.

People, especially children and teenagers, who think that mental illness is cool (and I really think some do) should be helped to reassess this attitude, possibly through counselling. Presenting an image that you are "neurodivergent" is not the way to have your shyness understood, your insecurities sympathised with, or your quirks appreciated.

All people of all ages suffering from illnesses should be able to access treatment. No one should be dismissed based on assumption. BUT I think it is perfectly possible to receive a diagnosis of a condition you don't actually have, especially in primary care. WhatToDoAbout you are correct in saying that someone with depression is not just sad, but as posters earlier were describing, the questionnaire GPs use to assess if a patient has depression is pretty flimsy and I don't see how anyone can fail to meet the criteria! Then, they prescribe ADs, maybe point you towards online resources for self-help, and that's it: you're officially mentally ill. But are you, really? The line between mental well-being and mental illness has to be drawn somewhere, but is it positioned in the right place? I think it is a valid question.

No, but do you recover from arthritis or fibromyalgia or asthma or diabetes? Or do you have a chronic condition that flares up every now and again?