Mental Illness Is Not “Cool”

Photo by Zachary DeBottis from Pexels.

“To those who struggle with real mental health issues: I’m so sorry you have to watch people try to turn them into a fashion trend.” – Mellet, T. S.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), mental health issues have been rising up since the start of this pandemic. During these pandemic seasons, a lot of people go through difficult times. Coronavirus (COVID-19) has first hit Malaysia in 2020, February 4. It has been a year and three months since. Many individuals are going through a mental breakdown as they could not do what they usually do before the COVID-19 outbreak. They could only stay home.

On the flip side, there are people taking mental illness as a trend before the pandemic happens. These are individuals who are still not aware regarding the solemnity of mental illness. Individuals who romanticize mental illness would have mental illness terms such as anxiety, depressed, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and eating disorder even when it was not as serious as it sounds like. These terms are often used by individuals who are not diagnosed with mental illness by the clinical psychologist.

People diagnosed with mental illness suffer from pain that people think is cool. Some individuals discontinued their lives to call it quits when the illness conquered their lives. They are searching for help while individuals who romanticize mental illness wanted to have the illness. This is a concern that society should look into. As we would not know, people who are close to us might have mental illness.