5 Harmful Mental Health Stereotypes That Have Got To Go

There’s no question about the fact that stereotypes about mental illness and mental health are incredibly pervasive in today’s world. As a result of this, harmful mental health stereotypes are fairly common to hear and pop up in all sorts of various media and contexts. Here are five harmful mental health stereotypes that need to go away.

“Mental Illness Is Just An Excuse To Do Nothing”

When people struggle with mental illness, it’s just that: a struggle. But there are harmful mental health stereotypes in society that if someone has or says that they have a mental illness, they’re only trying to get an excuse not to do anything, whether it’s work, study, or other activities. Living with mental health challenges is a constant battle against one’s own mind. And it’s often difficult for others to understand that while someone may appear fine on the outside, they could be really struggling within, and it’s exhausting.

While I’m sure that there is a very small number of people who declare mental illness as an excuse not to do things, the vast majority of the time, that’s not the case. According to estimates, one in every four Americans experiences a severe mental illness every year. If all of them were claiming mental health problems to avoid responsibility, this country and its workforce would be falling apart at the seams.

Unemployment would be skyrocketing, and very little would get done. Remember that not being able to see someone’s illness doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, whether that illness is a mental illness or a physiological illness.

“Medication Is A Lazy Shortcut”

Just like cancer, diabetes, and asthma, mental illnesses are diseases, and as with many diseases and illnesses, sometimes people need medication to get better. This doesn’t make them lazy and doesn’t mean they’re poisoning their bodies or avoiding their emotions. Harmful mental health stereotypes like this one prevent people from getting the help they need and deserve.

They just need some assistance balancing the neurotransmitters in their brains in addition to doing the mental and emotional work necessary to recover from mental illnesses.

Casual, Improper Use Of Mental Health Terms

How many of us have witnessed the following harmful mental health stereotypes: someone rearranging things on a desk or table and then saying, “I’m so OCD,” or a person telling someone else who’s experiencing a mood swing that they need to “Stop being so bipolar,” or using mental illnesses interchangeably with the word “crazy”? These are just three fairly common examples of people tossing around mental health terms to describe things or behaviors that aren’t actually what those terms describe.

OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) doesn’t always mean that a person is organized and tidy; it has more to do with their thought patterns and compulsions. Calling someone bipolar for having a mood swing is irritating, diminishes the experiences of people with bipolar disorder, and perpetuates false perceptions of the disorder.

The word “crazy” originated in the 1570s, and it originally meant diseased or sickly, but it has since changed to mean that something or someone is broken or full of cracks or flaws. Using the word “crazy” interchangeably with any mental illness is, at best, poor word choice, and at worst, harmful to people with mental illnesses and invalidating their experiences. That word implies some amount of brokenness or flaw or dysfunction, especially when used as a synonym for mental illnesses, and although that may not be the intention when the word is used, that association is there.

Calling someone crazy serves to dismiss their experiences as a result of something supposedly being wrong with or broken about them; it means that their experiences don’t matter and don’t have validity because the person is fundamentally broken in some way. People with mental illnesses aren’t broken, and they’re still people. They deserve better than to be called crazy.

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“Just Snap Out Of It,” “Smile More,” and Others

Nope. Please stop saying this. If people with mental illnesses could just “snap out of it” by smiling more or “being happy,” they would’ve already recovered. There’s no simple fix for mental health problems, and these types of phrases and sayings only put pressure on people to conceal their struggles, which only worsens them, and feel responsible and guilty for something that’s already difficult and also not their fault.

“Mental Illness Makes People Dangerous”

We as a society have repeatedly seen mental illness blamed for all sorts of tragedies and horrors, most notably mass shootings. While this country absolutely needs better mental healthcare and better access to it (less than half of all adults living with mental illness in the US receive treatment), if the only time we discuss mental illness is after a mass shooting, we’re doing something terribly, terribly wrong. The overwhelming majority of people with mental illnesses are nonviolent and not dangerous, and associating them with the perpetration of violence is just inaccurate.

Of all yearly gun-related homicides, less than 1 percent is committed by individuals with serious mental illness. Around 3 percent of all yearly violent crimes are committed by individuals with serious mental illness, meaning that more than 99 percent of gun-related homicides and 97 percent of violent crimes are committed by people without mental illnesses.

In fact, people with mental illnesses are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Demonizing mental illness in order to avoid addressing difficult issues like gun control, systemic inequality, or white supremacy is lazy at best and harmful to people with mental illnesses and potentially deadly at worst.