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[–]Femaleisnthateful 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

We need to start acknowledging that mental illness and personality disorders can be spread through social contagion. Telling people that they can adopt a reality of their own creation and bully everyone else into going along with it, and that they're victims of persecution if anyone tells them 'no', is a Cluster B personality disorder in the making.

Relatedly, we need to start controlling access to the internet, particularly for minors and the mentally ill. I have a family member currently in a psych ward for schizophrenia. He's not allowed to physically leave, but he's allowed free access to the internet via his phone. We have no way to know what rabbit holes he's going down. It's scary to me that if he starts identifying as a woman or an Otherkin or whatever, that's going to be reflexively affirmed and even endorsed by the people who are supposed to be guiding him back to reality.

[–]Wanderingthehalls 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

This feels like it will be controversial even here but I am really starting to lean very much towards the idea that the more we lean towards 'mental health awareness' the more and more of a problem we are creating. I've seen it with so many people that I'm close to that they were going through a difficult time, got diagnosed with depression or a disorder like ADHD, and within months their lives had gone completely off the rails. They leaned into their diagnosis as an excuse to let everything fall apart, the medication they were put on seemed to make them unable to feel good things properly, and they just go into this spiral of excusing their inability to make their lives better because of their illness/neurodiversity while being mildly zombified. They are really unhappy, become harder and harder to spend time with, increasing their unhappiness as many of their friends start to back off. Continually fail to make positive changes in their lives, complain to everyone about their problems and illness, fail to see that sometimes life is just a bit shitty and you will feel shitty and getting through it until you can move on and up, is what you have to do. And it's like that for everyone but most people don't (or at least didn't) complain about their problems all the fucking time.

I also see it with too many kids in both my extended family and my social circle. A kid who's more active then average gets diagnosed with ADHD. A kid that has a strong interest in a particular topic is autistic. A kid who doesn't like having their hair brushed has sensory processing disorder. And too often, instead of these diagnoses being something that helps the child's family to find ways to improve their behaviour, they become an excuse and the child's behaviour worsens drastically.

[–]ClassroomPast6178 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This feels like it will be controversial even here but I am really starting to lean very much towards the idea that the more we lean towards 'mental health awareness' the more and more of a problem we are creating.

No, I think that that’s going to be a much more widely held understanding in the years to come. We have known that “medical student syndrome” has existed for decades, why would it be any different for the population at large?

I think we went wrong when we pathologised feeling sad, we have arrived at a point where even people with a good reason for being sad are being described as having depression.

The social media cred that goes along with a “diagnosis” hasn’t helped either.

[–]Vulptexghost fox girl ^w^ 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The problem is the pressure to always be "affirming" no matter how ridiculous or even predatory it is. It's going to backfire and make everyone hate and distrust the mentally ill, because most labeled as such are faking it or deluding themselves and people don't know the difference. In fact I'm already being viewed as an inherently bad and suspicious person because of my difficulties, whereas before all this got so crazy people were supportive and didn't associate me with that. And by the way, gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and look where that's gone.

[–]OuroborosTheory 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

it's basically what we're probably seeing: and it's not "social contagion" per se

as we walk around life we classify things we see by categories we've learned: some of these are cultural--"blue" or "blue-green," "gay" or "top/bottom," but they're describing the same THING

so around 2015 you get this new category, that 1. says you don't have to have an overwhelming urge to swap sexes and 2. has been iterated to a cohort who can spend up to a decade hating the inevitable changes caused by getting older than 10 years old, treating them as an outside imposition on their bodies, as society forcing its norms onto them against all their will--no wonder a mushy, non-dysphoric attitude proves so attractive to a certain group of people aged 17-22