This piece is a part of MUSE Online’s 2022 Mental Health Theme Week. The MUSE team would like to emphasize that this piece may be triggering to some as it touches on topics of mental health and mental illness.
Disclaimer: MUSE Online acknowledges and makes it known that this piece is based off a personal experience and recognize that others may have differing experiences.

Mental health is becoming an increasingly more open conversation that people can have and I’m all here for it. However, I feel like society is currently in a phase where having poor mental health is being glamorized, which perpetuates the dangerous idea that suffering without help is okay– or worse, something that is tragically beautiful. 

We see this phenomenon amongst rising social media influencers. Nessa Barrett is a Tiktokker turned music artist with 7.5 million Spotify listeners and 19.5 million Tiktok followers. She is the internet's favourite sad girl. Everything from her aesthetic, from her black acrylic nails and uniforms of black skirts and oversized hoodies to her pouty Instagram posts to her discography give off this sad and mysterious persona. Her song titles should speak for themselves: la di die, dying on the inside, i hope ur miserable until ur dead, pain. Her happiest sounding song title is pretty poison.

Nessa struggles with diagnoses of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Her transparency about her mental health is courageous as mental health still remains a very stigmatized topic. However, since her mental health is often at the forefront in the things that she does and is deeply intertwined with her aesthetic, this could potentially encourage impressionable youth, who make up most of her audience, to adopt mental illness as hallmarks of their personalities. 

I want to emphasise that I am all for spreading awareness and fostering discussion about these issues. But what I find issue with is romanticising having poor mental health or mental illness, because though it may be common, it should not be strived for or be portrayed as something beautiful. 

The controversial Netflix show 13 Reasons also disseminates damaging information to viewer mental health. When Skye, is discovered to have a long series of cuts on her arms by another character in the show, Skye responds, “Suicide is for cowards. This is what you do to not commit suicide.” which suggests that one can justify cutting as a healthy coping strategy. The day before her suicide, Hannah meets with her school counsellor to talk about her current mental health, but the counsellor ends up talking over her and accuses her of being to blame for what has happened to her. While the show is a warning tale in itself, the interaction can understandably discourage viewers struggling with mental health issues or traumatic events from seeking help. While attempting to portray the realities of mental illness, the creators behind the Netflix show sometimes display a lack of care that allows these interactions and more in the show to be so flippantly displayed. 

Mental illness portrayal can be done right, however. Let's talk Euphoria. HBO’s Euphoria follows high schooler Rue Bennett played by the talented Zendaya, who has struggled with substance abuse disorder for years since the death of her father. In a scene from season two, Rue finds out that her mom has thrown away her drug stash. The scene shows Rue yelling at her mom, getting physically violent with her younger sister, kicking down a door, saying the nastiest shit you could think of to the people who loved her and were only trying to help. When I watched the episode with my housemates,  the room was deathly silent. Our mouths were pulled into tight grimaces, teeth gritted, fists balled, nails digging half-crescents into our palms.

The scene was excruciatingly painful and uncomfortable to watch, and makes you pray you are never in Rue’s shoes. Substance abuse is not glamorous or to be envied. Your relationships, your body, and your mind suffer. Though there are certainly times on the show where mental health and substance abuse portrayal can be problematic, this scene in particular shows that media attempting mental health portrayal can be done in a way that does not glamorise the struggles of those dealing with mental health issues.

Mental health and mental illness have only become more openly discussed in recent years, so the concept of mental health glamorization is understandably a big question mark for most people. However, that shouldn't make it any less important. I think a lot of the content we're consuming, be it songs we're listening to or shows and movies we're watching, inadvertently romanticize the idea of mental illness, making it seem like this tragic but beautiful thing. And a consequence of this is that it might make impressionable audiences feel comfortable not seeking help, even though they should be supported in their journey to get better, like anyone should from any sort of sickness.

Though some forms of media do portray mental health in a poor light, is it okay to limit how people express themselves and what about? I don't think so, but I also don't think we should just be idle when expressions are problematic. We need to discuss and consider the dangers of bad mental health portrayal so the public can educatedly voice their issues and bring them to the attention of creators when they see problems in their content. Following discourse, the public can choose whether or not to support the content of those creators and creators can choose whether or not to change. By having conversations, the public can change what is considered acceptable and most importantly, help destigmatize mental health rather than poeticizing it.

I don't have all the answers about mental health, much less all the right ones. Therefore I am very open to discussing this further and hearing from more perspectives. If you want to chat, reach out and I'm happy to talk!

Header Image: Sadie Levine

Image by: Rida Chaudhry