The Mental Health Conversation Is Not Over Yet

While focusing on mental health is important for everyone, one critical factor has been omitted from the conversation in recent years: general day-to-day mental health struggles are not the same as mental health conditions.

Although it is partially correct that the prevalence of mental health topics in general conversation has led to a better understanding of the conditions themselves, there is still a lot that most people don’t understand about Mental Illness. People with mental health conditions like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Bipolar Disorder (BD), and other such diagnoses were already dealing with heightened stressors and emotions before the global tragedy, and they will be facing them many years into the future.

Of course, it is important to address anxiety that comes in the form of “I am scared about the fate of the world and the safety of my family and I don’t know what to do about it.” However, it is also important to provide resources to people who experience Anxiety that looks more like: “I feel like everything is going wrong and there is no reason for it so it must be that there is something wrong with me.”

Mental Health conditions are often not aligned with a specific circumstance a person is facing. They are due to observable changes in a person’s brain chemistry. Therefore, while self-care practices and inspirational memes might be helpful, they are often not enough. Professional/clinical support may be the only way forward for people in these situations.

This is where the limitations of the mental health movement are the most obvious. By painting mental health challenges as things that everyone deals with and can work through with enough effort and time, we ignore the very real barriers facing people with diagnosable conditions.

Feeling anxious or depressed is not the same as having Anxiety (GAD) or Depression (MDD), but it is hard to know that distinction during casual conversations, especially now that these terms have been destigmatized. It is powerful that the shame that was once linked to these terms has decreased in recent years. This demonstrates that the world is moving in a good direction. However, in removing the stigma from mental health terms and making them a part of general conversation, they have become terms to use flippantly, without much care.

This has had the unfortunate consequence of removing the power from these terms, making them seem like inconveniences rather than very serious symptoms.