Over the past few years, mental health awareness campaigns have increased, and many celebrities have spoken publicly about their struggles with psychological and mental health problems, such as Prince Harry. Indeed, these campaigns have contributed to removing the stigma surrounding psychological and mental health and encouraging those suffering from these problems to seek help.
Despite these positives, talking about psychological and mental disorders too much can lead to exacerbation of psychological pressures. With the ease of access to content related to mental health through the Internet and various sources, many negative aspects of raising awareness have emerged.
Exacerbation of crises
Psychologists Jack Andrews and Lucy Foulkes stated in a recent article in New Aids magazine entitled “Do mental health awareness efforts contribute to increasing mental health problems?” Mental health awareness campaigns can be one of the reasons for the exacerbation of psychological crises.
They explained that some people's interpretation of mild symptoms of distress or sadness as deep psychological crises may, in turn, actually exacerbate the distress instead of alleviating it.
For example, anxiety is a natural feeling that a person experiences, so if a person suffering from mild anxiety reads about the symptoms of excessive anxiety, and begins to consider himself to be suffering from a serious mental illness, he is likely to become more focused on what worries him and more avoid anxiety-provoking experiences, which is This reinforces the anxious thoughts and feelings and makes the person feel worse, not better.
Transforming disorder into identity
In the midst of the spread of awareness campaigns about the suffering of people with psychological trauma, warnings are used before displaying content that may be painful, and although this is with the aim of protecting survivors of trauma and psychological crises from exposure to content that provokes their painful memories, a study conducted by the “American Psychological Association” I concluded that these warnings could be a reason for not overcoming psychological crises.
The study found that these warnings are ineffective and can harm mental health in the long term, as they encourage avoidance of negative emotions, reinforce to trauma survivors that their painful experiences are an essential part of their personal identity, and send the message that painful experiences cause permanent psychological change. But in fact, humans are naturally resilient and can overcome traumatic experiences.
Painting the wrong picture
Misappropriate use of mental health terminology in everyday life can paint a false picture of these disorders.
For example, if a person is strict about his own rules, and justifies this by saying he has OCD without consulting a psychiatrist, this can create a negative impression among others, that people with OCD are annoying people, who do not respect others, and are only interested in implementing their own system. .
Exploitation for profit
The British newspaper "The Guardian" indicated that some pharmaceutical companies call the normal psychological phenomena that most people experience, such as sadness and outbursts of anger, as disorders that require treatment in order to sell the medicine and profit from it.
Self-diagnosis
The study published in New Ideas magazine stated that the spread of information about psychological and mental disorders on various websites, films, and social media has exacerbated the self-diagnosis crisis.
It has become easy to read symptoms from any source, and individuals can more easily classify themselves as suffering from a mental problem and act accordingly, which subsequently affects their behavior and makes them believe that they are actually sick.
Being a person who does not like physical contact does not mean that you have autism spectrum disorders, and feeling upset sometimes is not called severe depression, and experiencing mood swings does not mean that you have bipolar disorder.
Awareness is not enough
The positive side of mental health awareness cannot be denied, but awareness is not the answer in itself, and the most important thing is to take actual steps to solve these crises, as Dean Burnett, Ph.D., a neuroscientist, explained in his article in the British newspaper The Guardian.
Burnett added, "The main problem is that the human mind is very good at perceiving things, but it is not easy for this awareness to lead to changes in behavior, and simply increasing psychological awareness may make the individual feel better because he did something, but in fact it did not change anything." ".
Mental health awareness is great, but it is really meaningless if actual steps are not taken to solve these problems.
moderation
After presenting the negative impact of immersion in the effects of psychological trauma, symptoms of mental disorders, and rumination of negative thoughts, psychologist Clay Rutledge advised in his article in the American newspaper The Washington Post to get out of the cycle of negative thoughts to engage in positive and feasible steps to reduce suffering.
He advised participating in charitable activities, which has proven to be more effective in improving mental health than traditional cognitive behavioral therapeutic techniques, as found in a study published by the Journal of Positive Psychology. This positive effect is due to the fact that humanitarian work helps in partially distancing your mind from your psychological problems and working towards others.
Exercise is also an excellent way to enhance mental health and reduce depression, anxiety, and stress, and even a simple walk in nature helps reduce rumination on negative thoughts.
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