Mental health is something that affects all of us, and we've seen how profoundly our mental health was impacted in recent years, specifically during the pandemic. When people started spending more time at home and online, social media influencers realized they had a bit of a captive audience and began sharing mental health claims, stories, advice, products, and diagnostic information. Much of this information was blatantly false and yet many people believed the claims made by the influencers. I cannot count how many people have reached out to me and explained the reason they need counseling is because they have xyz disorder, but when I ask them more about that, it becomes pretty clear they don’t have xyz disorder at all. Teenagers and young adults seem specifically susceptible to this kind of experience. It's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between what's true and what is not true in relation to mental health, particularly when it comes to mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression. There are LOTS of good influencers out there, many have great and factual information, but there are a lot of trash talkers too. This is partly due to the fact that we now have a lot of people online sharing information for likes rather than for truths. It is understandable why so many people turned to social media for information while being isolated, whether they were looking for information about their own mental health or they were having concerns about a loved one. Due to this issue and the constant sharing of misinformation about mental health, real mental health struggles can go unrecognized and untreated.
So this week’s journal prompt is part prompt and part a challenge to view your intake of information with a critical eye. While in graduate school, one of the things we were taught was how to be critical consumers of information. Whether that was information we were getting from scientific researchers or from our clients. We learned how to look at things with a critical eye, not to place judgment on them, but to better understand where the motivation to share the information was coming from. I wrote a blog post about this a while back and recently had an interaction with a neighbor that made me think revisiting this concept would be good. Can you think of places where you are getting information that might be slightly off, based on the source? Or a concept you picked up along the way that maybe you can let go of now that you really think about it?
Here’s my post on this, if you want to read more on this topic.