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Comment by ragingrobot | Hacker News Reader

About using mental illness as a way of gaining sympathy/popularity?

Unfortunately I have to agree with the parent, it does seem to be true.

In my own experience: my niece never mentioned depression until she saw videos about it on TikTok. Then she was always moody, and constantly stating "I'm depressed, but therapy is expensive. Can you give me money? Don't you feel bad for me?"

I see people walking around with T-shirts advertising they suffer from depression.

I don't know if social media and exposure has brought the correct view of mental illness to light.

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> About using mental illness as a way of gaining sympathy/popularity. Unfortunately I have to agree with the parent, it does seem to be true.

I see this too. I know people with real mental health issues that cripple them and I know people who like to use “mental health day” as a fad excuse du jour to just take a day off because “they don’t feel like working today”. The people I know with the real, crippling mental health issues generally don’t get over it in an afternoon of watching movies and being lazy—it’s usually days and weeks of agony.

So in my mind if people are using mental health just as an excuse to take a day off they are definitely doing damage to those folks who actually suffer from crippling mental illness by minimizing what it really is…because if Sally can sort out her mental issues by binge watching a show on Netflix in an afternoon, why can’t Frank get over his inability to get out of bed for three days by doing the same thing?

“Although if you chat with MD’s about this topic, diagnosing mental health is hard so that isn’t a silver bullet either.”

What are they going to give people a quick blood test for depression? “This person has depression today, they can stay home.” Neither you nor the parent understand what the term “mental health” means. You don’t catch stress or anxiety or schizophrenia like you catch a cold. It can only ever be self-reported because that’s what it is, by definition. If there were an underlying physical condition it would be reclassified as “health” rather than “mental health” as we do for autism, stroke victims, those with brain injuries, basically any mental health problem that can be reliably diagnosed by an MD ceases to be “mental health”

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