"My favorite pair of jeans ripped, I'm so depressed right now."
"Ew, that class makes me want to kill myself."
"My OCD is kicking in, I need to clean my room."
" God, why are you being so bipolar today?"
As a society, we've become so flippant with our use of words. I hear people using mental illnesses as adjectives all the time. The thing is, they aren't just adjectives. They are complicated conditions that people have to live with. We've all been guilty of it at one point or another. But have you ever stopped to think about the implications?
Words like retarded or ADD don't exist as adjectives to underscore your mood. They're not insults that you can throw at someone. Having an emotional day does not make you bipolar. You're just moody. Getting nervous for a speech does not mean you have anxiety. You're nervous. Being tidy does not mean you have OCD. You're just neat.
Using someone's mental illness to describe your mood trivializes their condition. Mental health is a serious issue for some people and often entails a daily struggle. By using their disorder to emphasize your mood, you're mocking their strength and what they've overcome. A mental illness is a lot more than just a mood swing. A mental illness is a daily struggle, often affecting one's ability to function. They can affect physical health, relationships, and loved ones. It's a lot more than just a prescription. It's addiction, fear, and pain. Using these words to describe your fleeting mood only captures one aspect of a very complicated problem.
Although we have made enormous progress, we are still trying to better understand mental illnesses. When serious conditions are used casually in conversation to describe someone that is not diagnosed, it just creates the idea that mental illnesses are not serious. It creates the false idea that human behavior is easily explained and that mental illnesses are simply surface-level.
Above all, using someone's fragile mental condition as an adjective is just plain rude. You never know what someone else is going through. Maybe they've had a relative affected by depression. They could be hiding an eating disorder. Even if you don't direct the usage of the word at someone, it could hurt their feelings.
We should be accepting and supportive of people with mental illnesses, not making fun of their situation.
