The unintentional harm done by popularized mental health rhetoric

The month of May marks Mental Health Awareness month, and in the spirit of that I have felt compelled to explore the ways in which I feel current de-stigmatization efforts are failing those with certain kinds of mental illnesses. 

Within approximately the last five years, and particularly after the pandemic, there has been an increase in trying to share information that better clarifies, defines, contextualizes, and demystifies those who deal with mental health issues. While this effort has nothing but the best intentions, the current ways in which we as a whole talk about mental health still have a lot of ground to cover. Obviously, we cannot yet expect for society as a whole to suddenly be all hunky-dory about mental health, and understanding of mental illness after the long-lasting demonization of those with mental health issues. I think the topics focused on within the media in particular (or those instagram infographics) actually work to make those with mental illness be seen as more of a conglomerate, generalized body and often fails to consider how individual the experience of mental health is. I also feel that often the awareness work done for mental illness tends to hone-in on a small collection of conditions in particular, namely depression, anxiety, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). 

While it is important that we as a society have an understanding of these aforementioned mental health complications, with so much focus being placed on those ones, it can cause other mental illnesses, especially ones that have deep histories of being fundamentally misunderstood or seen as “extreme,” to be left even further behind in the dust. With the more widespread empathy and understanding of those who struggle with depression, anxiety, and/or ADHD (which is still an impressive feat that we continue to work on) the sense of alienation and othering those with conditions like bipolar, addiction (yes, it’s a mental illness), schizophrenia, borderline personality, obsessive-compulsive disorders (especially those focused less so on cleanliness or organization, like Harm OCD), and many more. 

This also becomes increasingly complex when the idea of comorbidity comes into play. Often, those with mental health disorders do not just have one alone, much of the time there are certain mental illnesses which seem to occur/coincide with one another (a notable one being the high comorbidity between ADHD and autism). This can then create this sense of understanding for an individual in terms of one of their struggles, like anxiety, but leave them still feeling shameful or embarrassed by another disorder they might have due to the frequency in which both disorders seem to coincide with one another (with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, substance abuse issues, and other anxiety disorders being the most common comorbidities for anxiety, or generalized anxiety disorder). 

While overall there seems to be steps being made in the right direction in terms of mental health awareness, education, acceptance, and adaptability, we as a whole still have a long way to go until we have arrived at a place where people of all mental health complications are able to peel the societal shame as a result of their illness(es).