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?

I don’t know about wild animals, but certainly it has been well established that captive animals (in zoos etc) can and do experience mental illness and display neurotic and unnatural behaviour when not housed in a suitable and enriching environment.

Think on out when it was common to see tigers and elephants swaying and pacing in cages, tilikum the sea world orca, Morgan the captured wild orca, and I’m also reminded of a circus elephant that ‘snapped’ after years of mistreatment as well but don’t recall it’s name.

OP I agree with you. Every other new topic on MN will have the OP that 'has anxiety', or their teenage daughter 'has anxiety', or someone else. Which is usually used as a rationalisation for something that might otherwise seem unreasonable.

You are just nervous, shy, unsociable, whatever. You do not 'have anxiety'.

That's speaking as someone with diagnosed depression and on AD for the past 2 years. I never ever say 'I have depression' as an explanation.

For me anxiety is writhing sensation in the pit of my stomach and a constant 'fight of flight' reaction in my body. When it's bad my heart races, my breathing gets harder and my brain feels like it's going to explode because of all the information it's trying to process at the same time. At the worst times I either shutdown completely and can't function at all or I eat and eat and eat until I feel sick in order to suppress the writhing in my stomach. It also causes intrusive thoughts about suicide. I've never known a day in my life where it hasn't intruded into thoughts.

My anxiety is caused by my autism. I'm not a coward.

My cats were diagnosed as suffering from stress after a house move. Their symptoms were defensive 'spraying' on all doors and air vents. Not nice.

Big cats and polar bears show signs of stress when cooped up in cages.

Presumably if an animal in the wild was sufficiently mentally ill to not function normally it would eventually starve to death or get eaten - survival of the fittest for mental as well as physically weak creatures. On that basis it could be that any genetic predisposition to mental illness gets bred out of wild animals. It's an interesting thought but probably impossible to research.

Aside from whether OP is being goady, I think about this too. I do think it's true that as MH issues become less stigmatised and people are encouraged to talk about them, more people will, and will be willing to tell others about their diagnoses, obviously.

There's also the fact that things become more familiar to HCPs and more likely to be diagnosed. I've spent my life suffering extreme anxiety but for the first 40 years I didn't know that was a mental health "thing" that you could have a label for. I didn't think I was depressed, it was something else, but despite discussing it with doctors, I was never told "you have anxiety" - now I do "have anxiety" and medication for it and I'm loads better. So that's a good thing.

BUT. I do think there's also a "trend" and "fashion" element. We can probably agree there are certain people who use health issues to get attention, and people who crave approval, especially via social media. When you are given the message that having an MH issue that you open up about is brave, wonderful, inspirational etc, that may well encourage some people to want to be the centre of attention in that way. And as OP said, there are fashions and a ranking order of what it is more and less acceptable to talk about. Schizophrenia and things like tourettes and trichotillomania (pulling hair out) are not near the top. Anxiety and bipolar are more talked about. And people do openly talk about "self-diagnosing" as well, which means a HCP doesn't have to agree with them.

I think a similar thing is one element of what's happened with the trans movement too. While there's a core of people who have always had that experience, there will be others who have more nebulous feelings of alienation or body dysmorhpia/confusion and are drawn towards thinking they may be trans as the answer because it's become a "thing". (Some describe only realising later that it wasn't actually the answer and that transitioning didn't help them.)

That doesn't mean everyone who suffers an MH issue is a fashion victim. There have always been people who genuinely have a real issue. But I do feel like there are "trends" as well.

boldkitties I was diagnosed with OCD as a child and decided i didnt want medication. I also need to save up for therapy as its hard to come by on the nhs here. You are not a coward you are amazing getting through every day with it.

@Bearhunter09
That sounds horrific.

The only personal experience i have is a 3 month period where i had intense panic attacks. Stupidly, i believe these were related to a bad experience with drugs (not proud).

For the 3 months after that i was hit by these panic attacks where i felt like my heart was about to stop and my vision was fading. I had to take myself to a and e and they carried out tests. The doctor was like: it was a panic attack. I said: i just cant believe it was all in my head. He said: it wasnt, what you were feeling were real feelings. He was so kind to me.

Anyway at some point the panic attacks stopped. But every now and then i get this creeping feeling like its going to happen again. Usually on crowded public transport.

But ever since ive managed to control it before it happens.

But i think i can understand the feeling in a way - its the trepidation i guess that can take over your life.

Bold Kitties

I'm really sorry, my post was directed at people who are seriously ill but the multitude of people who now appear to have anxiety issues.

I'm really, genuinely sorry.

www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150909-many-animals-can-become-mentally-ill

I do get narked with shyness being portrayed as "social anxiety" now because it sounds worse than shyness.

was not directed at Bugger

@Rinoachicken
Yes, i was thinking of orcas too, but thats what i mean - for animals its about environment, which makes me think that perhaps human society has developed too quickly, too fast for our brains, and maybe thats why we have MH issues in a lot of cases. Maybe our environment as humans isnt right.

I'm delighted to learn someone somewhere thinks a BPT diagnosis is glamorous and not stigmatising...

*BDP obviously, not sure where BPT came from...

@GreatDuckCookery
Well someone else started a thread about what your favourite cake is if thats more your thing!

sigh... BPD even... you know, nevermind...

I don't know much about OP and haven't seen his/her other threads.

But I do think sneering and shutting down any attempt to discuss this kind of thing is worse.

It should be OK to question the genuineness of some of the ways people behave, or more generally, to analyse why things happen and change in society the way they do. These are debates we should have.

I’d agree that it’s a pretty valid theory that deserves some serious study

My pet snake probably has something neurologically wrong with it. got him Sept 2014, and he just would not eat, showed no interest in food what so ever, even when he started losing weight quite rapidly. Only option we had was to force feed, not just assist feed but actually push the mouse so far down his throat and hold his mouth so he eventually swallowed rather than spat it out. Lived with him like this for more than 3 years, saw all sorts of vets, consulted with multiple snake breeders. He was physically healthy, no parasites, he went to the bathroom normally after these forced feeds, he shed normally, drank fine, was alert and friendly. All the breeders said sometimes you get a snake in a clutch that won't eat, and it wouldn't be force fed it would just be left to die. We were attached and loved him by now though, so we carried on, every time we would offer, wait, but it would end in force feeding. For more than 3 years, til this January, something just changed in him and overnight he now eats perfectly normally by himself! nobody can understand it, and the only explanation i can think of, is at that point he would have hit sexual maturity, and that might have triggered something neurological to change. He is now also going to be a daddy, his girlfriend snake is pregnant, and she should be due to lay her eggs in the next week or two. Anyone else would have let him die as a baby, and now he is suddenly changed and can live a normal, healthy life He might never be as big as an average cornsnake since he had to be fed less frequently on smaller meals so his growth is stunted, and we don't know if his life expectancy will be below the average 18 or so years, but he could well live a perfectly normal, long and healthy life now, and its incredible.

MsJinglyJones
You've put it better than me.
Having had panic attacks and time seeing a counsellor for anxiety, it does my head in to see the growing trend for self identified anxiety.

E.g. I see students at work who are parent diagnosed with anxiety, can't come to class because that makes them anxious, but can come to class, make a big entry, ask for work whilst making a huge deal of how they are in the support base or see that there's a video clip on (or something more interesting than a pack of work) and suddenly they feel ready to give the lesson a go.

When I've had an anxiety attack, i felt I was going to die, head feels crushing, increased breathing, needing to use strategies to ground myself etc. I've missed things I enjoy because of it.

Yet there's some teens who are too anxious to be in a class of 30 quietly working but aren't too anxious to be in the lunch hall with 1000 other students making a noise.

The trend element muddies the water and annoys me because there will be some students who really do need help and support who can't get it because resources are having to be diluted to those who really don't need them.

MsJinglyJones maybe AS the OP and look at her/his other threads before you start calling people sneery

A bipolar diagnosis is not easy to come by and as far as I know won't be diagnosed in a teenager for exactly the reasons you indicate - some symptoms can be mixed up with adolescence.

I don't believe there has been an increase in people having bipolar, just in them feeling more able to come forward and seek help and that help being (marginally) easier to get. My husband talks about his diagnosis with friends because he doesn't think it's something to be ashamed of. I expect in the good old days when working class men were just expected to get on with it, he'd have taken his own life by now or died as a result of the reckless behaviour that's a symptom of the illness. I think I'm ok with a few people maybe being diagnosed unnecessarily with anxiety if that's a side effect of others being able to get treatment.

@MsJinglyJones
My last two threads were

1. asking for exotic holiday ideas for january and
2. what social/cultural factors combine to make british kids fatter than their continental counterparts

Now Im asking about why mental health diagnoses are becoming very common.

Not sure what the point of derailing the thread is