Please stop misusing mental health terms
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Within the past several years, there has been a strong push to increase visibility and understanding of mental health and mental health awareness. For the large part, this is an awesome push to destigmatize something that affects so many around the world, with an article from Howard Magazine by licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Howard University Doctor GiShawn Mance, noting that “…1 in 5 adults in the United States [experience] mental illness.” This data shows that mental illness is a prolific influence and factor in our society that demands further sensitivity, acknowledgment, care, and research.
With this increased visibility of mental health and its vocabulary, however, has come a slew of negative ramifications. One of these, in particular, is the way that the language used to describe mental health and illness is beginning to be inappropriately used in the zeitgeist. The words become almost trivial or meaningless language through their habitual misuse by the general public, with a special focus on social media and young people.
Before I dive further into this, I would like to acknowledge that I do not think the language around mental health only belongs to people with a diagnosis of a mental health disorder. In fact, there are many cases in which using certain language thought to only entail a disorder can help spread awareness that some of the phenomena are something many, if not most or all, people experience at one point or another in their lives.
People can and certainly do feel depressed or experience depression without having major depressive disorder, and the same thing goes for anxiety. People can feel or be anxious for periods of time, even if they do not have generalized anxiety disorder or another form of anxiety, panic, or phobia disorder. The diagnosis comes from an ongoing manifestation of these symptoms, which can and do exist in these more compact and occasional moments for a wider percentage of the population.
The real issue comes into play when words that do not have this same kind of cross-application are used by those outside of the community, as this often can make people who deal with those mental illnesses feel as though their experience is being undercut or commodified by social media and the broader public.
One in particular that has stood out to me recently is the popularization of the term “hyperfixation.” Now, hyperfixations are a very real phenomenon, described by NeuroSpark Health as “…a state in which an individual becomes deeply absorbed in an activity, subject, or hobby to the point where it consumes a significant portion of their time and attention… This intense focus can last anywhere from a few hours to several weeks, months, or even longer.” Another thing to note is that hyperfixations are often experienced by those with some type of neurodivergence, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and/or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
While on the surface, the use of these terms by people who are not neurodivergent or neurotypical might seem like no big deal, it can have very large impacts on the ways the world understands these phenomena. In comment sections or conversations around mental health, it can exist as a kind of misinformation, making the general population think they know more about these things than they do—sometimes even resulting in people telling others that they “must not actually have” whatever their mental health disorder is because it does not fall under the popularized narrative of what these disorders and their related symptoms actually look like.
This harm also works to silence people who actually experience these and the overwhelming or consuming effect it can have due to hyperfixation tendencies to cause “…a person [to] struggle to shift their attention away from the object of their focus, even if they are aware that they need to engage in other tasks. Hyperfixation involves a heightened sense of immersion, where an individual may lose track of time, forget to eat or sleep, and find it difficult to engage in conversations or tasks unrelated to their focus.” Silencing the lived experiences and anecdotes shared by members of the neurodivergent community can work to inform but also share experiences through humor with other people who experience the same symptoms/specific interests.
So, the long and short of this is that you probably are not “hyperfixated” on that new pop-girl album or A24 film— you just like it— a lot —and that is what you should say. In related terminology that also gets used this way, unless you have a diagnosis, you are also probably not “so OCD” about your silverware drawer or how you arrange your notes. You are particular, picky, specific, or whatever in lieu of related synonyms that already exist to describe this attitude; the weather in New York is also not “bipolar;” it just changes a lot throughout the day/week/month. Words have meaning, real and genuine meanings that pertain to people’s real and genuine lived experiences.
Continuing to misuse these kinds of words and throw them around like they are nothing more than your “word of the week” can have an experienced negative impact on the work mental health awareness is trying to do. Further discouraging those with less understood mental illness from trying to advocate for themselves, their experiences, and their language.