Mental Illness Can Be Gross Sometimes – And That's Okay

Awareness of mental health and how it affects us has improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years; largely due to campaigns like Mental Health Awareness Month, Time to Talk Day, Movember, and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). 

With 1 in 6 people in the UK having some kind of mental health issue, openness is more important than ever – and social media suggests we’re doing a damn good job of it, too.

There’s nearly 70 million Instagram posts tagged #mentalhealth and #anxiety, while TikToks under the same tags have over 100 billion views. But when it comes down to it, and you’re scrolling to find what these posts are actually saying, it isn’t… a lot. 

The majority of posts are infographics about mindfulness, changing your mindset, and why exactly it’s okay to be okay.

TikToks joking about cute and quirky “intrusive thoughts” will rake in millions of views, while well-meaning mental health influencers will post handwritten platitudes and affirmations from their perfectly-coordinated bullet journals laying atop their flawless desks.

It’s clear this kind of content helps a lot of people. It wouldn’t be so damn popular if it didn’t. But all it does is make me feel worse.

As someone with complex OCD, anxiety, and depression, I learned a long time ago that “speaking out” about mental health came with a huge caveat. It had to remain palatable. By which, I mean that any mention of mental health had to be easy for people to swallow. No unpleasant aftertaste allowed.

You could show symptoms of mental illness, sure. But they have to be the right symptoms – ones which don’t get in anyone’s way, fundamentally disrupt the status quo, or have any kind of impact in the way people want to see you.

We’re told that everyone is a little anxious and depressed these days, and if you end up disclosing mental health struggles, you’ll likely be met with support. 

But what we’re never told is just how conditional that support is. 

Telling someone you’re feeling anxious one day won’t change the way they see you. And it likely won’t affect them the next day, or the day after that, either.

But if it gets to the hundredth day and you’re still anxious, despite all the reassurance they’ve given otherwise, they become frustrated. Why don’t you just get over it? What do you mean you still don’t feel better?

And that’s oftentimes just the tip of the iceberg — the things in which you choose to share. As encouraged as we are to open up, it becomes apparent quickly that they only want the door ajar. 

This was proof enough for me that, despite saying otherwise, a lot of people don’t want to hear the weirder parts of my mental health — like how it stops me from brushing my teeth, tidying my room, avoiding the shower or having socially taboo intrusive thoughts.

But nothing confirmed that more than seeing TikToks and tweets shaming the symptoms of the very same mental illnesses we claim to advocate for. Day after day, I see posts about showering, brushing teeth, unwashed dishes and the state of depression rooms go viral for all the wrong reasons.

The general consensus among commenters, quote-tweeters, reposters and the like is that the people who live like this are “disgusting,” and that they should be an object of ridicule and derision rather than support. 

But what critics like that fail to see is how this neglect towards ourselves and our surroundings isn’t something that we do by choice — and isn’t something we can necessarily help.

When you get into that cycle of paralysing anxiety and self-loathing, you simply don’t value yourself enough to do these basic things. It’s easy to call people lazy — especially if they sleep all day and live in mess on top of mess — but as the shame surrounding your lifestyle worsens, and is only reinforced by comments of disgust on social media, you become more susceptible to falling deeper and deeper into that cycle. 

You’ll start off feeling disgusting and worthless, and end up neglecting yourself. This will go on for a while until one day you read comments online where those in similar situations to you are called disgusting and worthless, only further feeding into the spiral of sadness and shame which led to you neglecting yourself in the first place. 

The saddest part is, a lot of these admissions and videos find their way on the internet because that person themselves has chosen to be open.

They made the critical mistake of thinking that when society encourages us to talk about mental health, that means they can actually talk about it.

So, these posters explain the sense of pride they have for brushing their teeth for the first time in months; talk about the socially taboo intrusive thoughts that plague their mind; or agree to be filmed after plucking up enough courage to seek help for their matted hair or trash-filled house. And all they get in return is exactly what they feared, with the support that they were promised coming few and far in between the onslaught of disgust and shaming for the way their mental illnesses affect their lives. 

Watching all of this as a digital bystander — and experiencing for myself how conditional mental health support can be — was enough for me to hide those parts of my mental health forever. But I don’t think people commit to these platitudes in bad faith.

When they share those pretty little infographics or tell you that they’re always here to listen about mental illness, they do mean it. Most of them do, anyway.

The problem is, societal mental health literacy hasn’t evolved much beyond the “your scars are beautiful” days of Tumblr. 

We might try to pretend otherwise, but our collective inability to admit that mental health can be gross sometimes demonstrates that we still can’t shake that little bit of romanticism underpinning mental illness.

As comedian Rachel Bloom points out, a “sexy French depression” like we see in movies will garner a hell of a lot more sympathy than “I haven’t had a wash in two weeks” depression.

But the cycle of shame will never end if we don’t break it, and at least if we normalise the latter a little, then that’s at least a start.

Things might be a bit grim sometimes, but that’s okay. You’re trying your best.