Here's a Little Rosetta Stone for the TikTok Era of Mental Health

Very briefly.

This is just exactly it, right? This is, in one brief interaction, everything that I’ve been talking about. Someone expresses shock at what’s a well-known (and deeply injurious) symptom of a psychiatric illness. Someone else points out that it’s in fact a common symptom. The other person reacts violently to that point because the symptom is particularly unpalatable. But mental illness is unpalatable. Mental illnesses are disorders. They are diseases. They are dis-abilities. They are bad! Mental illness compels people to believe the they are being monitored by NASA, that demons are climbing up the walls, that they need to constantly rake their skin until it’s raw and bleeding, that they are terribly fat when they’re dangerously underweight, that they must play with their own excrement, that they are being hunted. Because mental illness is BAD. If you’ve ever been in a state psychiatric facility, you’ve been there with people who believe in racist conspiracy theories, people who have committed domestic violence, people who have committed sexual offenses. I’m not talking about excusing those things or culpability or whatever else. I’m saying: mental illness is ugly, destructive, and painful. And if we’ve come to the point where people regularly say “that can’t be mental illness, it’s too socially unacceptable,” how can we ever help the truly debilitated? How much further can this go?

By the way, “I have like 5 diagnosed mental illnesses” - no. No you don’t.