{"id":38239,"date":"2017-04-23T04:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-04-23T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38239"},"modified":"2017-04-21T12:19:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T16:19:53","slug":"the-transformation-of-mental-illness-into-a-fashion-accessory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/04\/23\/the-transformation-of-mental-illness-into-a-fashion-accessory\/","title":{"rendered":"The “transformation of mental illness into a fashion accessory”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> on the mainstreaming of mental illness as a status marker for “respectable society”:<\/p>\n

One of the great media myths of the 21st century is that there\u2019s a taboo against talking about mental illness. Please. Then how come I can\u2019t open a newspaper or flick through my TV channels or browse social media without seeing someone go into grisly depth, often replete with sad selfies, about his latest bout of mental darkness? Far from taboo, having a mental illness, and talking about your mental illness, is all the rage. It\u2019s the latest must-have. You\u2019re no one unless you\u2019ve had a mental episode. And I find this transformation of mental illness into a fashion accessory far worse than the old treatment of it as a taboo (which was very bad).<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s dangerous firstly because it springs from and reinforces the weird 21st-century trend for actively inviting people to define themselves as mentally ill. Everything from exam stress to general anxiety to feeling up one day and down the next \u2013 which used to be called \u2018moods\u2019 but is now called \u2018bipolar disorder\u2019 \u2013 is being recategorised as a mental illness or disorder. Everyday emotions and experiences have been co-opted into the field of mental health. You think you\u2019re shy? Nope, you have social anxiety disorder. Do you have an awkward friend? Maybe he has Asperger’s. Finding it hard to cope with your workload? Check out this Workplace Stress and Anxiety Disorder Survey<\/a> to find out if really you are mentally ill.<\/p>\n

Virtually all of life\u2019s struggles and people\u2019s personality quirks are being medicalised. And in some cases treated: Britain is said to be in the grip of a \u2018psychiatric drug epidemic<\/a>\u2019, as the number of prescriptions for mental-health drugs rose by an astonishing 500 percent between 1992 and 2014. It\u2019s like something out of Huxley\u2019s Brave New World<\/em>, in which people are given a mind drug that suppresses their \u2018malice and bad tempers\u2019. And people actively seek a diagnosis. A few years ago, a psychiatrist told the BBC that patients come to her saying, \u2018I want to be bipolar<\/a>\u2019. She said the desire for a mental-illness diagnosis often reflects \u2018a person\u2019s aspiration for higher social status\u2019. Yes, you can now boost your standing in respectable society by having a mental illness. This is how cool it has become to be mentally ill.<\/p>\n

The dire impact of the must-have mental illness is most clear among the young. I can\u2019t remember the last time I met a student who didn\u2019t claim to have a mental illness of some kind. A few weeks of stress over their exams and they think they\u2019re Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/em>. They post long social-media confessions of mental ill-health and everyone says \u2018How brave\u2019, overlooking that it\u2019s really not brave to do something everyone else is doing; to say \u2018I am mentally ill\u2019 in a world in which you can\u2019t swing a tote bag in Waterstone\u2019s without hitting 20 books about being mentally ill. Everyone\u2019s mentally ill; you aren\u2019t special \u2013 you\u2019re boring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill on the mainstreaming of mental illness as a status marker for “respectable society”: One of the great media myths of the 21st century is that there\u2019s a taboo against talking about mental illness. Please. Then how come I can\u2019t open a newspaper or flick through my TV channels or browse social media without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,28],"tags":[906,139,593],"class_list":["post-38239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-media","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychology","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9WL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38240,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38239\/revisions\/38240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}