We Need To Stop Romanticising Mental Illness

every one so um random voice Rachel here instead of my face today because I'm feeling a little bit of a mess and this is a video that was suggested in a post on my community tab the other week and it's something that I briefly spoke about in the past but not in very much detail and so it's something that I want to expand on a little bit today and that is glamorizing and romanticizing mental health issues and mental illnesses I find that there is a very fine line between making discussion around them normal removing the stigma and helping people understand that it's not an inherently bad thing and the lammer izing it to make it seem cool or trendy or whatever the kids say these days I don't know I'm not cool enough I think there's a fine line between that and often media and the internet kind of culture in general kind of starts to waver onto the wrong side of that I remember that when I was younger probably like early 2010's and stuff tumblr would be filled with these like artsy black-and-white photos with quotes about how she just wanted to end it all and if only he loved her she wouldn't be so broken and you know some of the kind of like I think the worst ones which like you know oh you look so beautiful when you cry and rubbish like that you know mostly it would become like teenage girls kind of constantly posting about their depression or their anxiety or a number of other like mental health issues and but it wasn't ever really to document their life or help themselves or help others it was more of like a search for popularity and to feel different and special you know and it was all about the numbers like these kinds of posts got notes and they got followers and that's what people were kind of doing them for and it started to create this link between like depression and popularity and there's a hell of a lot of problems in that you know I mean you'd even see people like role-playing as having like multiple personalities or sociopathy or any other number of disorders and of course what I think is probably one of the most dangerous dangerous issues and is the whole eating disorder culture on sites like tumblr so when I first I make a new videos I made a video about tumblers issue with pro-ana blogs which are blogs promoting anorexia and other eating disorders they post like thinspiration and basically egg each other own and like the really glamorize eating disorders and show like these absolutely beautiful stunning photos of women who were ill you know they were literally starving themselves and like the photos themselves from an artistic perspective they were beautiful the content wasn't that's that's what I mean and they'd post stuff like that and really romanticize it and be like oh you know you're not beautiful until you're half-dead basically and it's such a dangerous thing to promote and this isn't just an internet problem either it's not just on tumblr or nowadays more maybe on Instagram or something like that and the media is like a huge huge part of it books films TV even music have all glamorized mental health problems at some point even when it's not intentionally made that way it's important to look at how your audience is relating to your characters and what they can and will take away from them so even programs or films that make stuff with the best intentions can inadvertently be glamorizing or romanticizing mental health issues if that's how your audience is reading it I use reading in the media sense not unlike the literal reading book sense there was one blog post I found about the film The Virgin Suicides which is based on the book of the same name so the author of this blog post which is linked below as is everything I'm referencing and talking about today plus a few kind of mental health resources if there is anything that you're struggling with or need help with so for those of you who don't know the Virgin Suicides is a film about five girls sisters who through the course everything from summer all end up committing suicide and it's these boys who I think lived across the road from them or something like that kind of looking back on this time and they do like romanticize these girls and it's a little bit creepy you know as the author at the blog says you know the boys in the film and I quote almost fetishize the girls depression spying on them through their windows explicitly saying of the girls in the school like their allure and mystery the cinematography loads onto this fetish with the camera lingering on the girls as they laugh lick their lips and to all their hair these scenes often cut to a more somber image such as a silent shot off the youngest sister bleeding in her bathtub after her first suicide attempt all of this is done with the hazy colored filter meant to convey the reminiscence and embody the boys nostalgia the author goes on to conclude that this is a serious issue because and again I quote the movie therefore sacrificed an accurate portrayal of the dangers and damage of mental illness for the sake of intrigue and mystery which means a step backwards for the representation of mental illness in the media and I could not agree more and obviously there are so many problems with this the thing is the Virgin Suicides is quite an old film now and I'm not sure all that many young people have maybe seen it but it's still a massive problem more recently we've seen similar issues happening with shows like 13 reasons why and I should probably say at this point I've only seen the first season of that I started watching the second one it got a little bit slow so everything I'm talking about here is purely about the first season so 13 reasons why again based on a book of the same name a young adult novel as well I should add follows the story of Hanna Baker a girl who has a series of woeful things happen to her she's depressed and she ends up recording these tapes about everything that's happened she then kills herself and it's a friend to pass on those tapes to basically everyone around her so they feel responsible for her death I mean she even uses the line I'm about to tell you the story of my life more specifically why my life ended and if you're listening to this tape you're one of the reasons why it is messed up as a premise but couple this with the main character Clay's obsession with Hanna and I start to see some huge problems I wouldn't say it's the worst offender but it's definitely one of the more popular ones which is why I think it's important to talk about it in a very similar way to the Virgin Suicides clay I would argue definitely fetishizes Hanna and her issues and you know her mystery her intrigue her room you know sad girl vibes and it's interesting because I just spoke to someone about this who said like all the difference within reasons why is that Hannah's an awesome character in her own right and clay likes her for who she is and she just happens to have mental health health problems but like I pointed out to him that that's what he took away watching the show is like a nearly 30 year old adult that's not what teenagers see teenagers aren't likely to see the same things that we as adults are and this isn't just speculation we actually see this from the way teenagers and young people post about characters like Hannah and the show in general on sites like Tumblr and Instagram and even Twitter to some extent her health issues are romanticized especially from clays perspective a lot of the post people make kind of come across as clay having this kind of like I could have saved her if only she'd let me love her vibe you know a quick search for Hanna Baker on tumblr gives us a really good impression of how a teenager's view her character and honestly when it came to like planning this video and writing the script and researching and stuff I found I couldn't actually remember a single character trait that Hannah had outside of her mental health issues like what was she interested in I have no idea what she did it in school I can't remember I think she worked in a cinema for a while which is how her and clay met but other than that nothing and and so I was like well okay well I'm looking on tumblr maybe I'll find out more about her character and who she was no tumblr was no help with any of that stuff it was just full of these like beautifully lit shots of her crying or black and white gifts with captions like so young yet so damaged and blogs with names like depressing things posting quotes from her about what if it's too late or I just need everything to stop it's not really showing the trauma and the dark side of her illness it's making her seem cool and beautiful and appealing while saying incredibly messed-up stuff you know here's a character who's very clearly hurting and instead of kind of seeing that and showing sympathy or empathy they're like oh my god walls totally relatable and like how cool she is I wish I was like that do you know what I mean that it is a problem and I'm not saying that everything the show did was wrong and I just think they were a bit naive about how their teenage audience would respond and you have to remember that you know they based this series on a young adult book and even if some of the episodes were rated like 15 and 18 younger teens were always still gonna watch it and they really really should have had that in mind when they were making it and had maybe a better understanding of how teenagers would respond to certain characters and view certain characters and their actions and so on that said I don't know how other people felt about this but I remember the scenes at the end of the first season of Hannah's actual suicide made me so so uncomfortable I know some have criticized the scene for being like too graphic or a sensationalized portrayal of suicide some have said it functioned is more of like a how-to guide than what the producers actually wanted which was to show that suicide isn't easy it's painful it's scary and terrifying to go through with again to quote that produces themselves but some people have said that they didn't like it that it was too much or that it was too kind of like out there or it was - I don't know - too instructive I guess for teenagers who might be in a similar position but honestly I thought that one scene the suicide scene was actually really excellent part of the series because it felt raw it felt real it felt sadly relatable and I think that was the right way to portray it it did make me feel uncomfortable it was incredibly difficult watching but it should have been because it's suicide and that's not a nice pleasant thing it shouldn't be something where you just like ah that's a bit sad isn't it no you want something that is gonna like show you the difficulty and the pain and the trauma and the suffering and I do think that's something that those scenes did well and it was a good thing you know I just worry that it was kind of too little too late compared with the rest of the season which had been romanticizing her death you know what the characters reminiscing over her with ladies like slow-mo shots and close-ups of her face and her little smiles and the quirky music and everything I feel like that final scene was I say final scene but like her her death scene was just too little too late other people have raised other criticisms of the series for example and especially around Hannah's reasons for committing suicide in the first place saying that it's not typical of how most suicidal people feel and yeah I kind of have to agree with this and kind of I I do see the point you know so this psychologist called dr. Kelly Posner Kirsten Harbor really hope I'm pronouncing that right and she is the director of Columbia University's anti suicide initiative which is called the Columbia lighthouse project she criticized 13 reasons why saying that revenge as a motive for suicide is not the kind of message that is healthy or productive to send while dr. John Ackerman who is the coordinator at Nationwide Children's Hospital Center for suicide prevention and research he followed this up by saying Hanna's responding to these individuals who caused a harm or perceived harm in a very vindictive way plays into the teen fantasy and promotes a misconception that suicidal behavior is selfish again I completely understand these criticisms it's definitely not a typical teen suicide I guess you would say and there's criticisms about how most suicidal people probably won't have the ability if we're gonna say to go through all the stages she did of recording the tapes planning it all out all that kind of thing and but then again I know everyone's different so who knows anyway 13 reasons why is just one of the more recent examples but it is not all the only one you know films like Girl Interrupted and prozac nation also portray a fairly romanticized image of you know the beautiful damaged girl meanwhile TV programs like Pretty Little Liars which I used to watch so much and it's still probably one of the biggest disappointments in TV history for me is just so full of problems it oh it's an absolute mess isn't it I don't get me wrong some of the earlier seasons in particular are pretty entertaining but it is messed up it trivializes and demonizes personality disorders it has this absolutely bizarre demonizing portrayal if there one single transgender character it romanticizes several adults having sexual relationships with young underage teenage girls like as young as 14 or whatever and I mean that only scratches the surface don't even get me started on like Hannah's eating disorder and the body dysmorphia issues and stuff like that it's a mess that program another example that was quite a big thing when I was growing up with skins and I think that was like an American remake I heard it was terrible my mom bought like the UK series and while yeah it was fantastic entertaining and it was great wonderful bunch of messed up kids doing messed-up kid stuff brilliant but it has some serious problems and it caused some serious problems and I think in particular series three and false portrayal of Effie was seriously screwed up and very typical of romanticizing the whole damaged girl image I guess you could say even now at what 10 years on tumblr is still full of all these posts about Effie in particular but most of the skins cast like it's still very popular and a lot of them are reminiscent of the ones that kids post about Hannah Baker you know but with Effie instead so it's shots of her looking beautiful but sad you know black-and-white images relatable quotes about her feeling sad or down or lonely and someone I spoke to about this like he brought up the fact that as a teenager him and his friends like they loved F his character cuz he was like oh you know she was hot wasn't she and she seemed play sexually fluid so we all just felt that you know was guys we'd all stand a chance with someone like her and I'm like okay and meanwhile like the girls at my school like I remember they all literally like wanted to be her and I thought she was so cool and whatever and I just remember sitting there at the time thinking and I thought it again when this guy said this the other day I was like what are we watching the same program like really I mean yes the actress who played Effie was a beautiful woman you can't deny that but the character had some serious mental health issues and the way she used drugs and sex was incredibly unhealthy it was a coping mechanism she wasn't sexually fluid she was using sex to cope with the pain she felt and it all ended up being very damaging and hurting her even more it's not something to romanticize and sexualized some fetishes it was a girl in pain the way I remember it she jumps between sleeping with different people not because she enjoyed sex and kind of just felt it was fun and easy but because she was using it to try and fill a void you know to help her heal or whatever and because she was a lonely and insecure mess and she used sex to try and remedy that and in the end that's something that ended up messing her up even more and being a real problem and causing all kinds issues to see that as an appealing tree and have her character portrayed in a way that makes dangerous and unhealthy behavior which did hurt her seem appealing and glamorous and cool that just feels incredibly problematic to me even when someone ten years on you know their main takeaway from EFI's character is like oh she's hot and like sex I'm like yeah that's an issue I mean welcome back to this particular issue later on I do have to ask if EFI's character you know she did all the same things acted in all the same way but her character was played by a woman who wasn't attractive would people still have felt the same way towards her well they still have taken that kind of message away of just like a hot girl who likes sex was her behavior romanticized mainly because she was beautiful that in itself again is another problem we see a very very similar issue when kids on platforms like Tumblr and Instagram post about Lana Del Rey's music and don't get me wrong I am I like her music I think she's pretty great and again beautiful woman and but the lyrics that she hasn't some of her songs about feeling sad or lonely you know with this slightly hipster vintage aesthetic you know the fact it's this cool beautiful woman singing about them you can't have to ask does it normalize issues like depression or does it romanticize them you know what kids be still posting these same quotes and stuff if instead of having a photo with Lana looking beautiful you know it's lines like everything's fine but I wish I was dead instead of photos of her in the background it showed I don't know a 40 year old man crying in a bed and he hasn't showered in a week and he's in pajamas with food spilt down them and he's sat in a bed which hasn't had clean sheets in two months would they still be reblogging it but they still relate to it but they still think it was cool oh how about it's a mother of three kids who's suffering but she looks after her kids day after day and just gets on with things and even though she seems great and put together on the surface she's struggling underneath and inside if they had that text of everything's fine but I wish I was dead over an image of her mother with several kids do you think they'd still reblog it and find it cool and relatable I mean the message of I wish I was dead would still be the same and could be attributed to any of those people I just mentioned but of them show the harsh reality of what a person in that state of mind might actually be doing and the other romanticizes suicidal thoughts and makes it appear beautiful and cool and I don't think that's healthy especially not for young impressionable teenagers another big trend we have to talk about is the incorporation of mental health issues into fashion and clothing and again I have to ask is this normalizing mental health issues is it trivializing them is it glamourizing them or is it even exploiting them to make money I think we've all seen brands like forever21 amongst others you know they're not the only one but selling like sad girl merch and like hats and t-shirts with like mental health RIT related like slogans and labels on them you know some influence are selling like an anxiety queen t-shirt I don't know and it's not just general stuff like that you can literally buy a t-shirt with Kurt Cobain's suicide note on it why anyone would want to wear that I have no idea but you know I guess suicide is cold when it's done by a creative genius right it's kind of ridiculous and Rhiannon picked and James wrote for the New York Times that the problem with the prettification of mental illness is just how out of kilter it is with reality it's almost suggested as a desirable character trait for women to have and I think this kind of sums up this idea of like mental health fashion and clothing and stuff like that you know and I can understand why for some people it might be seen as saying like hey I accept this illness as a part of me but on the other hand it's making illness a fashion statement and that just seems a little bizarre or exploitative or again it's romanticizing it to me I mean I know would you really walk around with a t-shirt that was mocking or trivializing cancer or MS or Alzheimer's you know is yeah I don't think many people would I think the final issue I want to talk about is the portrayal of like celebrity or influence and mental health and again this is one that is very close to my heart and something that I think personally affects me and how I act and behave and talk about these issues you know I found this one blog post which critiqued decidedly you know celebrity influences coming out about mental health issues by writing though well meaning more and more celebrities at contra to a certain type of glamorization by coming out about dealing with their own anxiety and depression inherently celebrities are idolized by those same young people who are vulnerable to glamorize mental health struggle and as celebrities their struggles are often packaged as inspiring narrative missing the harsh realities of facing those struggles and I cannot help but agree well yeah it can sometimes be helpful or inspiring to see someone you look up to say hey I have or had these issues and here's how I overcame them that's not always realistic you know it's easy to have someone say oh yeah no I totally had anxiety when they sat there looking perfect and pretty and beautiful but when you see the other side the harsh reality of someone actually in a panic attack it can be a hot a lot harder to swallow you know on that same note a journalist Hannah Jane Parkinson also highlighted this trend and she pointed out that like another issue of glamorize in mental health issues is that it kind of makes him seen only like appropriate for certain people and this is coming back to what I was saying earlier about like Lana Del Rey and Effy and Hannah's characters and stuff like that you know so this journalist she writes it was cool to be a bitmap it meant you were a genius or a creative it wasn't just that certain mental illnesses were acceptable but certain mental illnesses were acceptable in certain types of people if you had a special skill or talent or architect set cheekbones all of this remains true sure Robert Lowell great poet madness excused Amy Winehouse voice of a god damn goddess will allow Cathy 54 works at Morrison's not so much white woman who has recourse to a national newspaper called Hannah perhaps black man who comes from a cultural background where mental illness isn't recognized and whose symptoms might be put down to erase it to the racist trope of aggression in people of color now me and this of course is a very real issue that we need to solve and I don't think we can just bury our head in the sand and ignore it you know we can't just decide to accept or reject or ignore or romanticize someone's illness because of who they are or their background every single person with a mental health issue needs to know that it's okay it's normal it's valid and you deserve kindness and support no matter who you are and what illness or problem you have we can't have a bunch of people exaggerating or exploiting their illness to seem cool while another group is afraid to say anything in case their labels as mad or crazy or called names or look down on another blogger I found and thinks that this has a bit of an effect on teenagers you know they wrote that more and more teenagers conference that depression anxiety anorexia and bipolarity are cool or can make you special you know going back to what I said in the beginning about blurring the lines between like relatability and romanticizing journalists just I think Jo ho yo ho I I'm not sure paternal surname sorry and but she suggests that this is still an issue today and it's just across more platforms than just tumblr you know she summed up a lot of my thoughts when she wrote social media has increasingly blurred the line between what's authentic and what is performance even within ourselves while posting about our upsetting vibes may feel real for some it might just be a new way to fit in online you know for others she even warns that the trendiness of sad online culture may lead to wrongful self diagnosis and inadvertent trivialization of serious illnesses the problem she writes isn't that more people are sharing their mental health experiences on social media but that some people are glorifying or misappropriating those issues without proper context and all of this brings me to wanting to end this video and this discussion on a more personal note I want to make sure that I'm honest with you guys about my own issues nothing about my mental health issues are glamorous none of it makes me more creative or cool I mean some of you guys have definitely seen me at one of my lowest point it's like literally mid breakdown by talking uncontrollable tears a bit of dribble barely able to string words together literally covered in my own blood and while part of me hates to remember myself like that and part of me wishes I could take it back and I wish that you hadn't seen it at the same time I'm not gonna lie because that is the reality that's the state I was in and that's the state I continued to get in sometimes it's happened in the past a number of times and while I hope it won't happen again the future I'm working to prevent it I can't make that promise the only thing I can really hope is if it does happen again it's in private next time having issues with anxiety and depression to me at least means being unable to shower for four days and having greasy hair and smelling bad and feeling ashamed to leave the house and having to cover mirrors so you don't see yourself it means constantly picking and poking at flaws and spots and stuff on my face until I literally bleed it means losing weight not because you don't want to eat but because you can't manage to leave your bed to go to the kitchen even though it's just in the room next door it means feeling like an awful mom because I can't take my dog to the park and I have to phone my ex to do it while I just stay in bed and cry you know to me it's when you finally stop feeling good about yourself and you treat yourself to a day out but on the way you it'll all warm on the tube and you take off your jumper and suddenly everyone on the carriage is looking at the cuts and the scars on your arm and you feel like the biggest freak in the world so you just jump off the train and you turn around and you head straight home you make sure that the next train you get on you keep your jumper on and you stay sweaty and disgusting and feel awful about yourself because it's better that they judge you for being a little bit sweaty than for what they see on your body your health your scars right it's meeting someone you really like and having to have that awkward conversation of look I need to be honest with you sometimes I get sad and I'll try and push you away or retreat into myself you know for days at a time or I'll get anxious I'll get insecure and I need you to know that it's not personal it's my problem I am working on it and I'm not necessarily asking anything of you but if you can't deal with that then you need to walk away now before I get real feelings for you it's having that conversation and morphed and they're not people deciding to walk away it's the time I hadn't showered in days and I had no clean clothes and I had to go to a counseling appointment I cycled there and then had a panic attack outside and I sat on the floor and cried in the street and I had to call my counselor to come out and get me and while sat there on the floor in the middle of a busy road in Oxford Cowley Road of all places and I was a disgusting mess waiting for my counselor in tears and two teenage girls came up to me and mistook me for a homeless and they started taunting me and teasing me for being a disgusting failure who no one wanted that's what living with depression and anxiety and social issues and insecurities and everything is really like for me it's not a pretty girl with cool makeup saying I get sad sometimes it's a mess and it's disgusting and it's hard and it's horrible and it's painful I want to be real with you guys and I want you to know that you're not alone if you feel this way or you feel something similar or you've been there I want you to know that if you don't have these issues yourself but someone around you does I want you to know what it's really like for them because they might not be able to tell you yourself or they might not know how to I want you guys to know that this kind of stuff isn't easy but it is more common than you think and it is kind of normal I never want you to be ashamed of yourself if you feel like this but I also want every single person to know the mental health issues whatever they are are not cool quirky personality traits I'm a person who I like books and paintings and dogs and octopuses and biscuits and white wine and indie music and makeup and board games and I also happen to have issues with depression and anxiety and self-harm and some major self-esteem issues and I'm working on all those things but those illnesses and issues don't define me any more than having a cold or a broken arm would define me they're part of my life right now and something I'm working on but they aren't Who I am and that's I guess where I want to kind of end this I mean there's so much more I kind of spoken about but the video is already pretty long you know at this point I've been recording for like 34 minutes so my voice is kind of going a bit and I'm a little bit emotional you know I didn't even touch on books or go all that in-depth with anything in particular but I just kind of wanted to get this conversation started and then hand over to you guys so I guess to end this my little challenge or request to you guys is I want you to send me things that you find that you think are glamourizing or romanticizing mental health issues whether it be fashion whether it be TV whether it be whether it be books whether it be poetry because I know that it's quite a big thing whether it be Instagram posts I want you to send them to me when you see something romanticizing or glamourizing mental health issues so that we can hopefully talk about them in a little bit more depth in future videos also with music as well TV shows I'm probably missing something I feel like I've forgotten something I don't know but like if they share the things do fine with me so we can talk about them in the future and let me know your thoughts on this issue overall down in the comments below and a little bit of shameless self-promotion before we end this video if you fancy wearing some clothes that don't glamorize mental health issues you can always check out my merch store and where I have lots of really cool designs mostly based around like and you know animals and octopuses and cool little like sayings and stuff from my videos and some cool like little science II like nerdy references and stuff like that and little in jokes and things like that and I'm really proud of all my merch it's all stuff I've designed or drawn or whatever myself and so it's like a little bit of a passion project for me and I really enjoy making it and sharing it with you guys and seeing you guys like where my clothing or like stick my stickers on stuff or you know basically anything like that it's really really exciting and cool to me and I love it so I would really really appreciate if you go and check out my merch store plus everything that is sold over there goes towards helping support me and my channel and helping me keep making these videos and it keeps a roof over my head which is very very important and anyway I'm rambling thank you for watching today I appreciate you guys so much links to everything I've referenced and spoken about in this video will be down in the description below along with the link to my merch still go check it out also don't forget grab your copy of doggy lessons the poetry book that me and Kyra worked on together the paperbacks are like literally being shipped and stuff now and it's very exciting and I absolutely love it and I just got mine today and I'm really like happy I'm proud of it okay so I know I'm rambling thank you so much for watching this or listening to this I appreciate you guys so much and hopefully I will see you again very very soon

Channel: Rachel Oates

Views: 449,663

Rating: 4.9525948 out of 5

Keywords: rachel oates, the rise of romanticising mental illnesses, mental illness merch, romanticising anxiety, romanticising depression, glamorizing mental illness, commentary, video essay, anxiety, depression, 13 reasons why, romanticizing mental illness, the virgin suicides, lana del ray, forever 21, mental illness, eating disorders, pro ana, anorexia, mental health, romanticization of mental illness

Id: eCWRQpfo4Q4

Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 17 2020