It started with small occurrences. The boy in biology who wouldn’t stop mentioning that he has a therapist. The girl in history whining over a bad grade, claiming that she was having a mental breakdown. My best friend bragging to me about the meals she skipped in a day, how she didn’t have breakfast or lunch. 

Then these small occurrences grew. Friends began arguing over who was more depressed. Locker room conversations consisted of students telling their friends that they're going to use their “mental illness” to get out of running laps in P.E. Classroom icebreakers became opportunities for the kid in the black hoodie with thick eyeliner around his eyes to tell us about his fifteen self-diagnosed mental illnesses as well as how he has no friends because he finds everyone else annoying. 

“Depression” has become a term to use whenever someone is feeling sad. Getting nervous to meet new people or talk in front of a class means you have an anxiety disorder.  Eating a few extra cookies more than usual means you have a binge-eating disorder. Getting a bad grade on a test justifies students’ saying they want to kill themselves. These diagnoses and terms have lost their meaning, their weight, their significance. They have become personalities, ways to get more attention, a reason to be seen as unique. 

People have found beauty in mental illness, and it has become a huge fixation of this current generation. And a big portion of the blame is pointing at our beloved, the media. 

Through glorified portrayals of mental struggles, the media makes young people desire mental illnesses. Since shows and books display characters with mental illness as people who receive attention and a thrilling storyline, younger audiences then figure that they too will receive that kind of special treatment and attention if they were to “have a mental illness.” 

Many people use the symptoms of mental illnesses to form personalities, especially the symptoms that are more theatrical and seen often in movies, books, and on social media. From acting tired and mean all the time to purposefully isolating themselves, these people want to be perceived as “mentally ill” and will mimic whatever traits of mental illness they see on screen, in books, or elsewhere. The reason they desire to adopt this personality is to find a way to fit into our community: they are now known as the people who are “lonely” or “sad” or “mentally ill,” and to them, these titles are a good thing, because the media makes it seem as if these traits get people attention and pity or that they make a person special. For instance, a classmate of mine is constantly bringing up the fact that she is “depressed.” If my friends and I are talking about a school dance, she will jump in to tell us how she could never be like us because she has no friends to go with and will be spending her time locked in her room because she is “depressed.” If my friend is talking about a new dress she got, the classmate will tell us that her wardrobe doesn’t consist of a single dress, only black clothes because she is “depressed.” If I am talking about a new friend I made, the classmate will tell me that she can’t make any friends because no one understands her, she is a loner, and most importantly, she is “depressed.” Because she seems to be constantly mentioning her “depression” and equating it to surface level traits like the ones aforesaid, I cannot help but feel this classmate is an example of using mental illness as a personality, for she clearly feels the need to bring up her “depression” as much as possible and even seems to be using it to make herself seem more interesting, or at least different from others. 

Now another part of the issue is the fact that people know how to “appear mentally ill,” or at least, they think they do. When people decide to associate themselves with these labels and adopt its supposed traits, they are really just adopting the numerous stereotypes that the media has caused to circulate around mental struggles. Now, we cannot talk about media-induced stereotypes without talking about the pinnacle of stereotyping: Tumblr. Tumblr, a social platform for short blogging posts, has been home to many people who were into a “grunge” or “goth” sort of aesthetic. This aesthetic consisted of wearing chokers, fishnet stockings, baggy shirts and pants, ripped jeans, black skirts, grunge-ish makeup, and neutral grayscale colors. This style was very much tied to the style of indie pop artists such as Lana Del Rey and Billie Eillish, whose songs consist of lyrics such as “it’s not fashionable to love me” (Del Rey, “Honeymoon”) and “I wanna see the world when I stop breathing” (Eillish, “Listen Before I Go”). However, this style was not just a visual aesthetic but a subculture which—especially on Tumblr—included talking about depression and suicidal thoughts, being a heartbroken romantic, and idolizing a heroin chic look. If one were to search up, “#softgrungeaesthetic”, filtered photos of cigarette cartons with phrases like “you’re going to die anyways” and artfully edited photos of scars pop up. 

This grunge-goth aesthetic began representing more than just a certain look; it also started representing a certain lifestyle and behavior: wearing dark colors and being depressed, listening to sad music and having no friends, smoking cigarettes with sunken eyes, hurting oneself and glorifying it. 

But the very obvious fact is this: depression is not Lana Del Rey music. It  is not a black skirt. It is not a pair of black, chunky boots. It is not any specific trait of this media-induced culture. 

Mental illness does not have an exclusive list of traits that one can check off one by one  in order to “become mentally ill.” Media simply showcases mental illness’ most stereotypical form; therefore, when people are trying to appear “mentally ill,” they are mimicking the stereotyped version of mental illnesses that they see or hear in movies, books, social media posts, and songs, which is almost certainly a version that doesn’t validate the pains and struggles that real mental illness entails. 

People also romanticize mental illness because they believe it is necessary to endure a tragedy in order to be strong and courageous: the Byronic Hero. The Byronic hero is a very sullen, brooding character that is usually ripe with this mysterious allure. But a key trait of Byronic Heroes is that they are tortured souls, carrying many emotional and psychological scars from their trauma. A popular example is Edward Cullen from Twilight. Edward is most definitely a troubled character with past trauma: he was literally frozen in his seventeen-year-old body and then turned into a vampire by a scientist. At this transformation, he grows to hate himself, for he believes all vampires to be monsters and is horrified by his now “monstrous” instincts and desires. Aside from his trauma, he is also extremely cunning and powerful, possessing superhuman agility, cognition, senses, and stamina. But on top of that, he is extremely moody, self-loathing, standoffish, rude, and of course, depressed. Yet when young audiences see this cold vampire and his being ridiculously possessive over the protagonist of the show, Bella Swan, they can’t help but drool over him, calling him “hot” or “totally gorgeous,” when in reality, if they were in Bella’s position, they would probably be reaching for the phone to dial 911. Along with the rest of his unhealthy “tragic hero” personality, Edward even has the aforementioned “mysterious allure” of the Byronic Hero that attracts not just Bella Swan but myriads of other fans: Edward Cullen is practically a textbook example of the Byronic hero. 

And the thing is, people love the Byronic Hero. 

Because this character archetype is so popular, not just in shows and books but by those influenced by those stories, many audiences believe exhibiting the traits of this archetype will allow them to be admired as well.  So they begin to create this dark, brooding character, one that is constructed of goth outfits, constant references to past trauma, an addiction to sad music, and cynical pronouncements, one who has to deal with all of humanity’s burdens and carry the weight of the entire world on their shoulders without the help of others, and they try to inhabit this role, hoping to be perceived as a “courageous” person for having to deal with such trauma and pain yet remaining so private and self-sufficient. The Byronic Hero was an idea originating in the Romantic era with Lord Byron’s Childe Harold, and ever since, it has simply become an even more prevalent issue of our generation. 

But that character archetype isn’t the only idea from the 18th and 19th century that glamorizes unhealthy situations and mental illness; in fact, the 18th and 19th century were time periods notorious for viewing pained artists, writers, and aesthetes as the “sensitive souls too good for this world,” and the first romanticized 19th century artist that comes to mind is the one and only, Van Gogh. 

Van Gogh’s artwork is heavily glorified. Take his famous piece At Eternity’s Gate, for instance. When looking at this piece, people shouldn’t simply notice the elegant ambiance of the painting and the distressed old man, but realize that this painting reflects Van Gogh’s deteriorating mental state, a piece he created when he was at his lowest point in life, when he was in complete, utter despair. It’s not just a beautiful, melancholy painting ; it’s an expression of a man who desperately needed help. Unfortunately, many people believe mental illness and creative talent go hand in hand. This belief, also known as the “tortured genius” or “tortured artist,” implies that every person who excels in an artistic field must be mentally tortured in some sense. Van Gogh is known as a “tortured artist” because he was plagued by various mental illnesses, experiencing so much pain that he hated his most famous and adored works, amputated his own ear, and even committed suicide, yet numerous art lovers strongly believe his depression and insanity benefitted him, adding something beautiful to his pieces. In 2014, The European Journal of Psychology  published a study examining viewers’ reactions to Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Half of the viewers were informed of Van Gogh’s mental issues, and the other half were not. As predicted by psychologist Wijnand van Tillburg, those who knew of Van Gogh’s poor mental state reviewed the work more positively than the group who didn’t know. 

There are plenty of past examples showing mental illness being glorified or valued in the media, but sadly, this romantic idea of mental illness has not receded before new developments in mental health. Presently, there are still several romantic depictions of mental illness in the media, and a dominant example is the TV series 13 Reasons Why.

Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why is notorious for glorifying mental struggles and unhealthy lifestyles. The show is about a girl named Hannah Baker who commits suicide, but right before her death, she sends out a tape to thirteen people. The thirteen people who receive the tape each supposedly provides a“reason” why she committed suicide, hence the show being called 13 Reasons Why. 

After the show’s release, there was a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among Americans ages 10-17.

This show’s entire premise is essentially that other people are at fault for Hannah’s death. Throughout the show, our protagonist Clay Jensen, a recipient of the tape,  uses the tape to uncover Hannah’s story and confront each of the culprits who lead her to her suicide. The plot is basically a “revenge fantasy” (Rosenblatt 2017). Furthermore, the show never indicates that there is help available or shows a way of seeking help; it simply causes viewers to believe that others will seek justice after someone commits suicide, that suicide results in attention, that a person will be more loved after he or she commits suicide. But that’s not the case.  

By glamourising not just suicide but other problems such as depression, anxiety, and drug abuse,  this show has managed to convince an overwhelmingly large audience to want to commit suicide. After the show was released, there was even a 23-year-old Peruvian man who took his life and left tapes behind for people in his life, just as Hannah did in the show. 

Mental illness is constantly being romanticized in all forms of media, and because of this,  viewers have been deceived, tricked into finding beauty in mental illness, believing there are supposed “benefits” to gain from it. 

But the truth is that mental illness isn’t beautiful, in fact, it’s the furthest thing from it: it is terribly ugly. And as someone who is guilty of finding beauty in unhealthy experiences of my own,  I was reminded of this fact when I read Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

This is a tale of a woman, also our narrator, who suffers from what her husband believes to be a “temporary depression.” He brings her to a small, secluded house to help her rest and get better for the summer, and at first, this house seems beautiful. But then the narrator sees the room she has to stay in at all times. It’s vast and vacant, airy and suffocating, but the most awful trait about it are the walls, the way they are wrapped in a disgusting, horrid, “irritating” yellow wallpaper. At first, the narrator is distressed by how restricted she feels, but as the days pass, the narrator’s focus shifts away from her desire to escape, instead fixating on the yellow wallpaper. She observes this wallpaper for hours, for days, never looking away from the yellow, tracing her fingers along the walls, following every curve and wave, every diagonal and outline of the paper’s pattern. And after watching, listening, and touching, the narrator decides that she has been right about this wallpaper all along, that there is something wrong with it: she decides that there is a woman trapped within the wallpaper, begging to get out. She is beyond enthralled now with her stay, for she has a purpose: to free this woman. So she begins to rip and tear the paper, madly stripping it off, desperate to let this woman out. At the sight of his wife, frantic and manic, creeping around the room and ripping every inch of the yellow wallpaper, the husband realizes that the wife’s problems were more severe than something that a little self-discipline could fix. And so he faints out of pure shock and revelation, but the narrator pays no attention to him, leaving the reader to sit in utter shock and confusion with the line: ‘“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”’

And so, as you read these words and come to the end of the short story, you cannot help but wonder: who is Jane?

It’s the narrator. The narrator is Jane. 

See, what happened was that the narrator saw similarities between her and the woman in the wall—-how they were both trapped and desperate to escape their prisons—and went insane, so insane that she and the woman in the wall became one and the same. 

This tale truly encapsulates the reality of mental illness: it is disturbing, frightening even. It—as a matter of fact—is not beautiful, but very ugly. Mental illness isn’t wearing dark clothes or listening to sad music. Mental illness isn’t a way to make someone “special” or to receive a ton of attention. Mental illness isn't a personality you inherit or something that makes a person’s skills more impressive or valid. 

Mental illness is an illness. The same way malaria is an illness. The same way cholera is an illness. The same way colon cancer, coronavirus, dementia, arthritis, chickenpox, and gonorrhea are all illnesses.

Mental illness belongs on that list as much as any of those other diseases do. 

But it seems that we have forgotten that fact, and although this piece has been putting the blame on the media, the blame is on those who consume the media as well: we are also the problem. 

It’s foolish to think that having mental struggles benefits a person in any way. The best way to achieve attention and have an interesting personality is through earnest, personal experiences, not inheriting the ones you see on TV. Instead of believing social media’s disproportionate depictions of mental illness, we must take the time to try to interpret things intelligently. You can still enjoy reading sad books or listening to sad music while acknowledging the fact that these disturbed characters aren’t models to emulate. 

It’s simply a matter of awareness. 

Be aware that it is impossible for the screens to show every feeling felt, for the song lyrics to offer all possible perspectives, for the media to capture every truth of an experience.  Because the only truth you can know is that there is no beauty in what is properly called an illness.