Written By: Vasvi Jain
Edited By: Akrit Agarwal
Designed by: Saisha Singh
Our fast-paced lives and this COVID outbreak have increased our awareness about mental health. As a society, we know a lot about it than we did in the past, and we are more accepting towards people coping with it than we were 20 years ago. We have learnt to respect mental boundaries and give people space, are we overdoing or underdoing it? Should we label mental illness in a social context or is ambiguity regarding it better?
We posed said question to some of our peers, and we collected the perspectives below.
For labels:
The idea of labelling things helps maintain social order. As humans, we feel the need to organize everything and establish a balance, allowing us to make complex things and ideas easier. Labelling mental illness reduces its complexity for the society and helps them associate it with entities, hence allowing them to fit the illness neatly in a metaphorical box and link it to other such scenarios. Its understanding becomes easier and thus allows the society to accommodate accordingly. - Anonymous
Labelling mental illness in a social context may be beneficial for the society and the individual, as the society can make changes to the best of its ability in the social order to make the person feel better and help them combat it. - Anonymous
Providing a label enables the people battling the mental illness to protect themselves from being called “freaks”. Being labelled not only expands social understanding of mental illnesses but also decreases the scrutiny the afflicted may receive from the people around them. It allows the person to feel less overwhelmed when they are in social gatherings and may help them establish friendly relationships with other people. – Anonymous
For ambiguity:
To most people suffering through any kind of mental illness, other people knowing about it is often a source of shame. For that reason, most people consciously try their best to act normal. This knowledge regarding one’s mental health causes people to act sympathetic and overdo things, sometimes triggering their worst memories and making them feel rejected or anxious. Therefore, I believe that people being aware of someone’s mental state leads to them unintentionally causing harm or worsening their situation, by misinterpreting the severity of the issue due to the loose use of such vocabulary by today’s generations. Although there do exist a few exceptions in people who truly understand, as a society, I don’t believe labelling mental illness is better for the person constantly fighting his or her way through a new day. – Sarthak Gupta
While it is acceptable for researchers and psychologists to label a mental condition for gathering data or for further research in a social context, given the current scenario of COVID-19, labelling isn’t the best idea. It’s like a tag imposed on a person who is already going through a lot of hardship. That individual’s entire personality starts revolving around the tag or the label the society gives them, which makes them stand out of the crowd and feel different and distinct – even if they are just trying to fit in. Hence, it may not have a positive outcome for the society or the individual. – Anonymous
The assumption that a listener makes after being told by the individual that they are dealing with a mental illness changes the way they treat that individual from here on out. This causes a negative chain reaction where every time, even if rarely, when the individual starts to talk about what is bothering them, it is not taken seriously. Instead of providing support for that individual, the person starts to get irritated by them and pushes them away which only worsens their mental health condition. For that reason, I believe labelling shouldn’t be done in a social context. – Anonymous
Although there are advantages and disadvantages to labelling mental illness, the disadvantages seem to overpower the advantages. Like everything, even tagging has pros and cons, and it depends on the respective person and scenario they find themselves in. It isn’t something that one can easily generalise for everyone.
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