IlanaGrowing up, your perception of yourself is naturally influenced by those around you – and thus, in addition to environmental influences on our mental health, the environment can drastically change how we perceive our mental health in relation to others.
When I was younger, I struggled with anxious thoughts and a negative self-image. I once assumed my feelings were normal because it seemed like everyone around me was just as miserable. Between social media and the high-pressure environment at my high school, many of my feelings felt normalized.
It didn’t fully hit me until I had a conversation with a friend about our shared experiences from high school.
“I guess I didn’t realize how much I was struggling because everyone around me was, too. Or, they had it worse,” I sighed.
“That must have been really hard. At least you knew you weren’t alone,” she offered, then shook her head, “I just thought I was crazy.”
There are many factors that can make an environment destructive to young people’s mental health. While the stigmatization of mental health is damaging and isolating, treating unhealthy behaviors and mental illness as the “norm” can be equally as harmful.
I grew up in an environment where self-deprecating jokes were common, my peers and I bought into unrealistic expectations for ourselves, and stress was considered the default state.
Along with this, I was exposed to virtual spaces that either romanticized mental illness or promoted unhealthy relationships with food and body image; this has since become a hot topic in mental health conversations. While some online spaces can be harmful, others provide vital support and community for those struggling. I consider the danger of these spaces to be not just the unhealthy behaviors they promote, but the fact that the normalization may prevent individuals from reaching out for help. The extent to which this affected me at the time did not hit me until I found my distance from it. I wish that I had known that I was struggling so that I had felt able to ask for help or seek out resources.
Throughout my life, as I compared my own mental health struggles to what I saw online and among many others, I struggled to feel mine were “significant enough” to reach out for help. Many individuals with mental illness face both public stigma and internalized self-stigma, both of which can be extremely limiting. Of course, these issues can overlap – people may be comfortable discussing certain mental health symptoms but will not want to acknowledge other less flattering ones, or one element of mental health can be normalized and not another. Since then, I’ve learned to recognize a larger range of what mental health or mental illness can look like and to have empathy for what I’m going through instead of comparing my situation to others.
There are a variety of reasons why someone might not speak up about their mental health. I imagine two worlds, one in which you are anxious and sad all of the time, but so is everyone else, and the other where you are the only one who feels that way, and everyone else seems to be happy. In the first world, you don’t speak up because you are the same as everyone else. You might think they even have it worse. In the second world, you don’t speak up because you are afraid to be labeled different. At the same time, you don’t know that many others may feel the same, and you just don’t know it.
What would have happened if I had grown up in an environment where stress wasn’t the norm? Maybe I would have been less stressed – but maybe I would have been struggling still, and feeling alone in my experience. While the environment may have made it easier to realize I needed support, it may have been more challenging still to say something about it. Many environments heavily stigmatize anything outside of a strictly defined norm, which causes repression and isolation.
Normalization and stigmatization can co-exist, and both require education and a deeper understanding in order to create a supportive, nurturing environment. In lieu of the normalization of unhealthy behaviors, I’d encourage a stronger support of people living with mental illness, without promoting behaviors to others. It takes a lot to tackle communities where something like stress culture or negative self-talk is so ingrained, but these interventions are vital to supporting the well-being of young people, who are especially influenced by their peers and by social media. To break stigmas, I hope to continue to see people sharing their own stories of living with mental illness and continued dialogue about addressing mental health in our communities. I hope that young people especially feel able to speak about mental health and mental illness freely without the challenges that arise when struggling becomes the new normal.
If you or someone you know is struggling with tough thoughts or emotions right now, you’re not alone. Help is available 24/7. Text or call 988 or chat online at 988lifeline.org to get connected with a trained, caring counselor.
Works Cited:
Ahuja, Jai, and Palak A Fichadia. “Concerns Regarding the Glorification of Mental Illness on Social Media.” Cureus. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 21 Mar. 2024. Web. 26 Dec. 2024. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11032084/
Corrigan, Patrick W, and Amy C Watson. “Understanding the Impact of Stigma on People with Mental Illness.” World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA). U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2002. Web. 26 Dec. 2024. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1489832/
Sukunesan1, Suku, et al. “Examining the Pro-Eating Disorders Community on Twitter via the HASHTAG #PROANA: Statistical Modeling Approach.” JMIR Mental Health. JMIR Publications Inc., Toronto, Canada, n.d. Web. 26 Dec. 2024. mental.jmir.org/2021/7/e24340/
Ashley B
Brynne
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