Mental Millennials

Mental Illness is not Immaturity

Mental illness. Whether it’s something that people self-deprecatingly admit to or swiftly assign to the latest mass shooter, mental illness is frequently and way-too-easily appropriated for anyone’s purpose. As a not-proud sufferer of it, I grit my teeth when people describe their quirks as OCD or their assholeness as bipolar or their Monday funk as depression. I’m glad that mental illness is apparently destigmatized enough that people can joke, but these jokes swap out fear of the mentally ill (which, despite being so common, is not an official phobia) for dismissal. If everyone is “mentally ill,” then everyone can get over it, right?

That’s what neurotypical people think. To them, depression is a case of the blues, and in their experience, they’ve been able to lift themselves out of it. Because they don’t have clinical, chronic depression that makes it hard to function. To them, anxiety is the jitters, and in their experience, deep breathing works. Because they don’t have disabling panic attacks that can feel like you’re dying.