The Romanticisation of Mental Illness: On Campus and Beyond

‘The National Report on Student Mental Health in Third Level’ launched on the 27 th ofAugust in Trinity College by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has found a third ofcollege students are experiencing “extremely severe levels of anxiety” and have had a formaldiagnosis of a mental health difficulty at some point in their lives. Quite notably, the reportalso concluded that almost one in four of those affected consider themselves “very unlikely”to seek help. These numbers are staggering and indicative of a campus culture that stillmisunderstands those suffering with poor mental health, despite the gargantuan work that hasgone into de-stigmatising mental illness in this country in the past decade. Campaigns such asthe Cycle Against Suicide and Green Ribbon Campaigns have become household names andequality legislation has been passed in the Dáil protecting those with mental illness fromemployment and consumer discrimination. On our own campus, a Student Mental HealthPolicy has been in place since 2010 and Mental Health Weeks occur at least once a semester,yet students are still reluctant to seek help. Why?The way we discuss mental illness amongst our peer groups and how we practice self -care(or don’t) has a huge part to play in exasperating this epidemic. Among my own friends I’veseen the downplaying of potentially very serious issues: binge drinking or using drugs as acoping mechanism, pulling consecutive all-nighters to finish assignments and living off ofenergy drinks during exams. I mean, how many times has this happened to you? You’resitting with your friends in the lobby of the library near exam time and a conversation breaksout about how many hours of sleep everyone got last night :“I only got four hours” you say,while someone else pipes up that they “only got two” and somebody else “didn’t sleep at all”and so on and so forth. Before you know it, it’s too late, you’ve unwillingly entered yourselfinto a competition to be the person who has their shit least together. The most tormented™ inthe friend group.It seems we’re living in a bubble where unhealthy and damaging habits are not onlynormalised but romanticised. We’ve romanticised the notion that you have to give yourabsolute all to the course you’re studying, that you’re not a good student or you’re not tryinghard enough if you don’t go at least a little off the rails in the pursuit of good results. Aroundexams, especially, it’s trendy to let sleep, socialising and even basic hygiene take a back seatwhile we compete against each other to stay the latest in the library, so we have something tobrag about later on. As a generation, achievements gained without a semblance of pain andsuffering are boring to us. This can’t be all our fault though, it had to come from somewhere,right?Today, much of the media we consume knowingly or unknowingly romanticises mentalillness. A common trope in movies and TV depicts the mentally ill and damaged person asprofound and wise while the well-adjusted person is ridiculed as boring. Movies like ‘SilverLinings Playbook’, ‘Girl, interrupted’ and controversial Netflix series ’13 Reasons Why’ allshowcase mental illness as beautifully tragic and desirable. One of my own favourite films,‘Heathers’ belittles and romanticises both suicide and eating disorders in multiple scenes. Theage-old formula for teen dramas always portrays a girl choosing the dangerous and off therails “bad guy” over the boring, put together “good guy” type. This exact narrative plays outin 2019 Netflix release ‘After’ and countless other films.But it doesn’t stop there, you can have mental illness romanticised in the palm of your handwith apps like Tumblr and Instagram fetishizing depression, anxiety and eating disorders.Tumblr is home to a whole host of mental illness “communities” or “subcultures” which aresaturated with graphic images of cuts, blood, pills and emaciated bodies on weighing scales. Ican’t scroll through my Instagram feed without seeing memes that downplay the severity ofmental illness, joking about depression or suicide. So, it didn’t stem from nowhere. It’s nowonder we have a warped idea of mental illness, it’s being marketed to us as trendy or cool.The media we consume has made us numb to the suffering of our peers and even ofourselves. It convinces us of the lie that serious issues like self-harm, eating disorders andcrippling depression are normal things that everyone must go through.Popular culture perpetuates this notion of the ‘tortured genius’, someone who prioritises theirwork above all else, sacrificing themselves and their mental health in the process. This maybe where you got the idea that it’s cool to spend the night in the library fuelled only by aStarbucks coffee from the ORB. Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Wolff allsuffered with poor mental health and many believe there to be a correlation between theirartistic success and their mental suffering. Sure, they were all incredibly talented and allsuffered from extremely poor mental health but anyone who has graduated secondary schoolcan tell you correlation doesn’t equal causation. There’s no basis in science to support theidea that artistic talent or creativity can be the result of poor mental health. But people haverun with it anyways. Take Vincent Van Gogh, for example, with his famed severed ear andsuicide by gunshot, he is the poster boy of the ‘tortured genius’ myth. Many speculate VanGogh’s artwork was a result of his fractured mental state but extensive research into the lifeof the artist by author Bernadette Murphy found the artist only actually painted betweenbreakdowns when he felt stable. Purveyors of the ‘tortured genius’ myth suggest that had henot been mentally ill we wouldn’t have Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, ‘Starry Night’ or any otherof his ground-breaking masterpieces. People need to get a grip; Van Gogh’s spectacularworks were not because of his mental illness but despite it and if he had received the help thathe needed we’d have much more of them. I like the way professor of psychiatry, KayRedfield Jamison puts it; “No one is creative when severely depressed, psychotic or dead”.These are just some of the harmful ideas we are being bombarded with on an almost dailybasis and have been since we were all quite young. The obsession with mental illness onTumblr was in its heyday when I was around 15 years old. It resulted in many girls I knowbeing utterly consumed with ‘thigh gaps’ and self -harm. Many of whom made it out worsefor wear. Dr Mark Reinecke, chief psychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital says thatduring the vulnerable years in which adolescents seek out self-affirmation and recognitionfrom others this “promise of being recognised as strong, beautiful and mysterious” throughthe romanticisation and displaying of mental illness traits can be very tempting. Dr Reineckealso confirms that being exposed to a constant stream of negativity and romanticised sadnesscan only worsen things for adolescents suffering with poor mental health. “When you look atsecular trends and epidemiological research completed over the last several decades, thereseems to be a slow and fairly consistent increase in levels of depression for each succeedinggeneration of teenagers,” says Reinecke.It’s no surprise Irish college students are battling with anxiety and depression. Many studentsface financial hardship, commuting for hours a day, overwhelming workload and a lack ofsleep to name but a few. It seems these are the terms and conditions of life as a student inIreland. The current student accommodation crisis can force students into commuting fromtheir home towns, isolating them from the campus and college life in general, or payingabove and beyond what they can afford, putting extreme financial pressure on families or theindividual themselves. Conditions in the available accommodations don’t help the situation.As a first year I experienced many sleepless nights as the block I lived in practically vibratedwith noise until 4am each night. One of my friends became ill from mould and damp in thebedroom for which she was paying upwards of 150 euros a week. These circumstances aregrim but we’re not helping ourselves. We pressure each other to conform to an unhealthydrinking culture, claiming “it’s just not fun if you’re not drunk”, we encourage ‘all-nighters’instead of getting the work done in a timely fashion and we isolate ourselves around exams,not asking for help when we need it. I don’t need to tell you how all of this is detrimental toyour mental health. Many college students live wildly imbalanced lives and we need to startlooking after ourselves better.Stress and anxiety are common feelings to experience in college and a lot of the time, it’shard to discern whether you’re experiencing normal levels of anxiety and stress or if whatyou’re feeling is indicative of a deeper, more serious problem. When these symptoms are nolonger taken seriously as a possible sign of a diagnosable mental illness but instead are put ona pedestal or used as a punchline we have a very serious problem. Romanticising andnormalising these feelings only serves to dissuade those in actual and desperate need of helpfrom seeking it out. Mental illness is serious. It ruins lives. Anyone who has actually sufferedwith their mental health will tell you that. Making light of it or normalising symptomsassociated with it is a disservice to anyone truly struggling right now. Profound sorrow doesnot make a profound person. People grappling with mental illness are not amazing because ofit but were amazing to begin with and continue to be amazing despite it. So please, bemindful of what you consume both on social and mainstream media and look after yourself,especially when you’re feeling down. Get enough sleep. 8 hours. Every night. Go to yourlectures, tutorial, labs , the lot and give yourself plenty of time to get work finished. Take anight off of the drink every now and then. Eat a vegetable. Go for a run. And please pleasetalk to someone if you need help.You can chat via freephone or text with UCC’s free, non-judgemental and confidentiallistening service, Niteline, on 1800 32 32 42 every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdayand Thursday nights from 9pm-1am throughout the academic year.