Skip to main content

Careless use of mental health terminology

Anushree Saboo

Remedial for Quiz 10

Casual throwing of mental health terminology can cause a lot of problems. A word repeated again and again can lose its meaning. People seem to forget that words like "depressed" and "OCD" carry a lot of weight and meaning with it and are actual mental conditions which people are diagnosed with.

My favourite TV character died? "I'm depressed."
I want to eat something completely different from what I like. "You're bipolar."
The problem is that most people do not even realise that is this a problem. Here comes in ignorance. Why is mental health viewed as to be inferior to physical health? Those who have actually gone through these mental health conditions can effectively tell how struggling it would have been. People don't use words like "cancer" as a metaphor for someone being weak. Then why so with terms associated with mental disorders?

Using such terminology in a lay manner can be extremely damaging. Using such words to describe our mundane activities or our behaviour can dilute the actual meaning behind the term. Today, saying "I'm depressed" essentially means "I'm sad." So, how should a person who is diagnosed with depression describe his or her emotions? It is also majorly demeaning to the ones who have actually been diagnosed with such mental illnesses. 

Saying, "I am OCD" just because you clean your room daily or because you like your clothes to be in a certain order is a very reductionist idea of what OCD actually is and how it's symptoms manifest. While everyone is very casually throwing around these words to describe themselves or their feelings, someone is actually going through this mental issue which is in fact, largely stigmatised in society. It poses another problem. If someone says "I'm depressed" when they are feeling sad then it connotes to the fact that it's a temporary emotion and it will fade away. What if, then, when a person with depression says the same thing. People would assume their condition is also simply a phase and when it does not, it attaches a stigma to it. Depression is long-lasting. The diagnostic criterion itself states that the feelings of sadness (including other factors such as change in sleep patterns, loss of energy, anhedonia etc) must manifest for the time period of at least two weeks before it is called 'depression.' Associating such terms to negative attributes gives these terms a negative connotation. This will reinforce the stigma which is attached to mental illnesses in the society. 


Language can change and change must be brought about. It must not be taken lightly and we can educate ourselves and learn not to use these terms recklessly. Trivialising a mental health problem will make a the life of a victim of mental health unnecessarily harder and so, we must encourage each other to be careful about our words. Words have a great impact. Words have the power to change. 

Using these terms over and over again will make them meaningless and hence, it is simply unjustified to use a mental health condition as a metaphor.


Resources: 
https://mhfaengland.org/mhfa-centre/news/new-bupa-research-mental-health-terminology/

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Analysing “Anniyan”: Dissociative Identity Disorder meets Personality Disorders

Pranaya Prakash In the movie “Anniyan” (Shankar, 2005), the protagonist Ramanujam Iyengar, also known as Ambi, is the host of his alters: Remo and Anniyan. While the focus of the movie is only on Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), the host, Ambi, and the alter, Anniyan, show symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), respectively. In this blog post, I attempt to critically analyse the portrayal of DID and the possibility of the protagonist having comorbid Personality Disorders. While it is highly unlikely for individuals with DID to have comorbidities with Personality Disorders ( Antisocial Personality Disorder ), especially with OCPD and ASPD (Fink, 1991), it is interesting to think of the possibility and analyse the developmental trajectory of these individuals.  The movie starts with the character development of Ambi, a lawyer who is meticulous and very particular ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hardin's trauma

“After”, is a 2019 teen romantic drama directed by jenny gage that revolves around the love of  Tessa, an inexperienced teenage girl, with Hardin, a mysterious ‘bad boy’ . Hardin, the main male character, never had a secure relationship with his father. When Hardin was young, his father used to be an alcoholic with a lot of debt. When he was just eight years old, intruders broke into his home looking for his father for money, however, there was only Hardin and his mother. The intruders forced themselves on Hardin’s mother, and Hardin, who was sleeping then, came downstairs to see what was wrong. To Hardin’s shock, his mother was being raped by three men, one by one. Hardin’s mother told him to leave, however, one man forced him to watch everything.  I would assume that Hardin has PTSD as a result of this incident, and in this paper I will try to prove it. Symptoms of PTSD and scenes that prove Hardin had it: The person subsequently re-experiences the event through both intrusi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is Patrick Jane a psychopath?

Under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Psychopathy was never recognized, until the revised DSM-5 categorized it under Anti-Social Personality Disorder. “He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence” (Hare)  Psychopaths can replicate the behavior which the person they are interacting with thinks they want from them, without feeling a thing, which contributes greatly to their ability to manipulate. Psychopaths charm and lie their way seamlessly to the top, and while they lack empathy, they are well-liked because they know what to say and when to say it. Psychopaths occupy most of the positions of power in our society and corporations and thus often end up being glorified. This glorification of psychopaths is most evident in the portrayal of psychopathy in TV shows. Some of the most notable characters which the screen has ever seen, like Marlo Stanfield from ‘The Wire’, James Moriarty from ‘Sherlock’, Hanni...
Post a Comment
Read more