By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
“I just cleaned all my closets—I’m just so OCD.”
“I’m so depressed that I forgot to eat my takeout leftovers—again!”
“Ugh! Rain again?! I’m getting PTSD over the rotten weather lately.”
Posts such as these on social media may seem humorous to the posters, but they all misuse words associated with mental health terms, reducing the meaning of the words.
A mental health issue “is any set of behaviors or experiences that interferes with social or psychological functioning,” said Nicki Ditch, licensed mental health counselor, and owner of In Truth Mental Health Counseling in Webster. “It interferes with relationships. They can’t hold down a job or get in trouble at work or can’t function during the day.”
Typical spring cleaning, forgetting about leftovers or experiencing a rainy day typically do not disrupt activities of daily living for days and weeks. Using mental health terms as part of hyperbole can.
“Having people throw around terms waters down and minimizes the struggle for people who fit the criteria,” Ditch said. “It makes it difficult for society to really understand it. If people hear all the time ‘It’s my PTSD,’ then society doesn’t take it seriously. They think it’s something less than what it is. Someone who changes mood quickly isn’t bipolar. We have mood fluctuations. Bipolar disorder is a serious set of experiences that is really hard for people.”
In additional to minimizing these struggles, using mental health diagnoses as shorthand for garden variety preferences and inconveniences also makes it seem as if a diagnosis defines those experiencing it, such as, “He’s a bipolar today.”
“With a disorder, there’s a fine line between ‘This is difficult for me’ and then at the same time, it doesn’t define you,” Ditch said. “It’s not moving you around like a puppet.”
Misusing terms also often means defining them in an inaccurate way. Ditch used obsessive compulsive disorder as an example: it doesn’t always present as washing hands 20 times before leaving home every day as many people think. For some people, it can mean perfectionism regarding a task to the point where the job is never good enough—and never completed, making employment challenging.
Experiencing a few quirks or traits doesn’t a diagnosis make. A recent trend in social media is sharing a video revealing a “diagnosis” in what posters hope is a shocking fashion to gain clicks and likes.
However, without a provider’s actual diagnosis, it’s just guesswork. Most likely, it is incorrect. Unfortunately, some viewers believe it and form a misguided perspective on mental health issues, believing the most extreme “example” is typical.
“People are afraid to hear what that diagnosis might be,” said Samantha Colson director of training and programs at National Alliance on Mental Health, Rochester. “We encourage folks to seek treatment and get that diagnosis. It opens doors to be supported with mental health. Language is huge when we talk about mental health conditions.”
Amy Durkee, director at Spiritus Christi Mental Health Center in Rochester, believes that flippant use of mental health terms can add to stigma, especially since the most extreme elements or exaggerated symptoms are sometimes represented as typical of that issue. Or as noted before, everyday inconveniences and preferences are treated as mental health issues.
“It confuses people in general,” Durkee said. “Maybe I don’t have a condition or maybe I do have something seriously wrong with me. It confuses the whole human experience.”
Even experiencing a serious but short-term difficulty in functioning may not qualify as a mental illness. For example, depression impacts activities of daily living for more than two weeks to meet the clinical definition.
Durkee encourages anyone struggling to seek a screening with their primary care provider or ask a mental health professional for help. Those who fear receiving a diagnosis often believe that they will be permanently labeled or viewed as “broken.”
“But that is just a part of what you are,” she likes to remind people. “There’s so much more ‘right’ with you than what’s ‘wrong’ with you.”
Misusing mental health language may also lead people to believe that nothing can help improve their mental health. If “everyone” is depressed, those experiencing real depression “may think there’s nothing that can be done about it,” said Lauren Wadsworth, Ph.D. and founding director of Genesee Valley Psychology in Rochester.
A person with a diagnosis may also feel like they are failing at recovery since they are not coping as well as the self-diagnosed who have no mental health issues.
Although Wadsworth is pleased that people are trying to express their emotional experience—“that’s a great thing for us as a society to do more of,” she said—using the correct terms would “take us further as a society and make space for honest conversations about emotions rather than using terms that increase mental health stigma.”