The call then is for more pills, more therapy, more of everything, including more panic. Perhaps it’s time for more sober analysis.
Throwing Gasoline on the Fire
Instead of applying critical thinking to these self-reports, many health and media professionals have rushed to throw gasoline on the fire.The presence of a mental disorder was not independently established and the discrepancy between parental and child reports was ignored.
Negative Emotions Are Healthy
These concerns are not the result of substantial epidemic increases in the rates of mental illness. They arise, in some part, from poor mental health literacy and unrealistic expectations of the normal emotional states that life challenges elicit.In many cases, the self-identification of being “ill” arises, to quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” from not being able to differentiate the normal “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from pathological states.
This is a cultural issue that has become a diagnostic expectation. A number of converging factors may have created this confusion.
First, the increased public perception that being well means only having positive feelings is taking over the social discourse on mental health. When the measure of health is simply feeling good, negative emotions become a marker of being unwell.
However, normal negative emotions actually promote growth and are essential for human development and adaptation. Without negative emotions, we exist in “Pleasantville.” Without addressing the life challenges and opportunities that negative emotions signal to us, we can’t develop resilience.
Pathologizing Normal Life
Second, the use of words originally developed to identify mental illnesses to describe normal negative emotional states has burgeoned.As a result, the call is for more therapy, more pills, and more panic. We don’t need more pills or therapy.
A Technological Misadventure
Third is the rise of technology and electronic communication. Personal communication devices like smartphones limit the important face-to-face contact with others that makes us human. And the capacity of a text message does not allow for the expression of complex ideas.We are struggling with the rational use of this technology and have yet to come to terms with how to control it, instead of it controlling us.
Living with, and on, our devices may even make us lonelier. The same phenomenon prevents us from making the face-to-face social connections that are necessary for social connection, the antidote to loneliness.
This is not a mental illness; it is a technological misadventure.
So we have some challenges. We have to think critically about our language and our expectations. We need to develop mental health literacy—understanding how to maintain good mental health; understanding mental disorders and their treatments; decreasing stigma; and increasing our capacity to appropriately seek help for mental illness, not for everyday unhappiness—to clarify this confusion.
Then, we have to learn how to take control of this “new” technology.