A joint article by Archana Sundar and Cassie Baker
Browsing through a rack of t-shirts, you hear a girl complaining about those shoes she didn’t buy last week. You hear her say, “My mom didn’t let me buy them, I was so depressed the whole week!” How does this resonate with you? Would you brush it off, would you be offended, would you say something? In your weekly study group, your friend complains, “God, this test is causing me so much anxiety.” Do you understand the problem with this statement?
Mental disorders are valid health issues that are diagnosed and treated professionally and safely. The use of mental illnesses as adjectives is extremely harmful to those suffering from these disorders, because they can contribute the the degeneration of the person’s self esteem, as well as make their illnesses seem invalid, or imaginary. For example, by saying that you or someone else is ‘feeling so bipolar’, you insinuate that ‘bipolar’ is synonymous with ‘volatile’, ‘moody’, or ‘dramatic’. In actuality, bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness characterized by severe episodes of mania and depression, not a fleeting sense of ‘moodiness’. According to Mayo Clinic, bipolar disorder is treated through “valproic acid, lithium, lamotrigine, quetiapine, among others…Other treatments include cognitive behavior therapy or psychotherapy.” You wouldn’t pay for these drugs and therapy if you were just ‘feeling bipolar’, would you? By using bipolar as an adjective, the patient’s struggles with the disorder is erased, and the disorder is made ‘mainstream’ and taken lightly.
The stigmatization of mental illnesses in our society is largely due to the fact that they are never taken seriously, often because they are treated as trivial. While physical injury or illness is largely validated in the 21st century, mental illness is doubted, and those suffering are often labelled as “attention seeking”, due to the fact that it is not immediately apparent. Because of this frequent invalidation, many people living with mental disorders are afraid to seek help, as they fear they will not be taken seriously. This makes it even harder for people living with mental illnesses to feel safe and accepted, especially when the same people telling them that their disorders are invalid are turning around to use them as adjectives. When mental disorders are used as adjectives in everyday conversation, it contributes to the negative and commonly accepted stigma: the claim that mental illnesses are just inside your head.
Sources:
“Bipolar Disorder.” Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 10 Feb. 2015. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.
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