opinion
Fiona Phillips: Stop trivialising real mental health issues
Real depression and anxiety can be incredibly scary - and that's not the same thing as stressing because the dress you want has sold out
There’s a lot of talk about mental health around right now as we all share stories of how we’ve coped – or not – with the coronavirus lockdown and its consequences.
Have you noticed how many times you hear the sentence: “I am SO depressed”? The problem is, there’s a danger in talking about things too much. People interpret mental health in different ways.
For instance, a teenager might say: “I’m SO depressed” if they read about a heartthrob musician hooking up with a gorgeous model.
How about: “I am SO depressed that Zayn Malik is back with Gigi Hadid”. No, you’re not. You’re jealous, not mentally ill.
You’re not depressed. You’re envious. And then there’s: “I’m SO depressed I can’t go out tonight because I’ve got so much homework to do”. Annoying? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. Depressing? No.
“I am SO depressed” is one of our most overused sentences uttered by people who mostly have no idea what real depression is.
Sentences such as: “I’m SO depressed, that dress I liked has sold out now” completely trivialises what it means to have a mental health breakdown. It’s nothing more than wanting something you can’t have.
Real depression and real anxiety can both be the most scary, uncontrollable states to be locked in, or to witness – as Kim Kardashian has discovered with her husband Kanye West’s ongoing problems, including ranting about very personal marital issues on Twitter, for which, she says she’s “powerless to help”.
And this is the crux of it. Scientists can grow babies outside the womb; they can transplant a dead person’s healthy heart into another person’s body; men can walk on the moon and eat lettuce grown in the International Space Station, for goodness sake.
But the horrible sledgehammer of depression?
Go suffer guys and don’t expect any really useful relief.
The overuse of the terms “depressed”, “anxious”, even “suicidal”, by people who are medically suffering from none of those conditions is belittling the severity of genuine mental illness, for which treatments are lacking.
Who wants to place a bet on a coronavirus vaccine being in circulation well before mental health treatment ratchets up to the standard it should, and desperately needs to be?
MirrorCeleb