Hey guys!
Recently the team has noticed an increase of chats discussing mental illness, and we thought it would be a good idea to discuss about it.
I would also like to add a disclaimer before I begin stating that yes, I, and others on the phan team, have dealt with mental illness in the past, and we understand how you may feel. It will get better!
Many people do struggle with mental illness, and this is of course not meant to tell you how to deal with it.
It is completely understandable to want to meet people that you can relate to and honestly talk to about your mental illness.
The problem with joking about mental illness, though, is that it encourages people that don’t understand the reality of the subject to make their own jokes which increase stereotypes and stigma.
They make mental illnesses like anxiety and depression into some relatable meme that many people think is cool to be a part of.
With so many young and easily influenced fans on our amino, it is quite possible that they may come under the impression that depression is cool.
With many people in a chat that often talk about their mental illness, it often creates toxic mindsets, and people don’t get better by talking to each other, but rather worsen with each other. Of course, you can be friends with whoever you want, and this is NOT meant to target anyone in particular on this amino! But it may be better for your personal mental health to try to be around more positive people that won’t trigger you or worsen your mental health.
What is not okay is to glorify or romanticize any mental illness.
It is not cute or funny to have depression, anxiety, OCD, or any other mental illness. It is not something anyone should want to develop, and if you are struggling with similar situations, it’s best to seek professional help.
Attached here is a link to a site full of helplines that you can access in any region for various topics, incase you are need of help: https://helplines.org/helplines/
Yes, making relatable memes and joking about your mental illness may help you come to with it and cope for the time being.
But what you may not realize is how your jokes affect others.
Talking about triggering topics in a group chat, especially an easily accessible public chat, can spread toxic negativity easily or affect others with similar mental illnesses that aren’t as comfortable to talk about it. If you do need to talk to a friend, it would be best to take it into a PM with someone who is comfortable with any triggering topics.
Though, as a reminder, pictures of self harm or anything explicit in nature is not permitted /anywhere/ on amino.
I’m sure we all agree that the Phandom Amino should be a happy, friendly safe-space for any Phans to get along, and recently some people have felt that certain groups in our community have fed into toxic mindsets and worsened their mental health, which is not okay for anyone.
I’d like to personally recommend this video on the Romanticization of Mental Illness, which goes a bit more in depth on some of my points: https://youtu.be/_BxM0E2yYfE . This was specifically made about tumblr communities, but some of the same mindsets apply to other social media platforms, such as our amino. It does bring up some triggering topics, so watch safely!
As a last little point to stick in here, I’d like to remind you that as the Phandom, it is not our business to speculate on Dan’s depression or make jokes about anything regarding Dan and Phil’s personal mental health.
Hopefully this informed some of you that have been struggling with mental illness recently, or those of you who have been uncomfortable from chats regarding jokes about mental illness.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please respectfully leave them in the comments below.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!
![PSA: Discussion of Mental Illness-[C]Hey guys!
[C]Recently the team has noticed an increase of chats discussing mental illne](https://image.staticox.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpa1.aminoapps.vertvonline.info%2F6810%2Fed9e6cea959a87a635f36650bc1eeb775d56c9f1_hq.gif)
Comments (50)
Thank you, finally someone says it
I'm going through a really hard patch today and seeing this in my feed...honestly doesn't help. This is so disappointing that people actually do this.
What do you mean...? I’m sorry that you’ve had a bad day, my PMs are open if you need to talk!!. However it’s important to talk about for the benefit of the community as a whole.
Reply to: bri
I'm just saying it's so disappointing that people don't take mental illness seriously. At least for me, the disappointment is a bit enhanced when your mental illness is acting up at that time.
Thank you for making this post. As a person who has struggled with mental illnesses, it really triggers me when people make fun of or romanticize things like depression and anxiety. I hope people read this and stop what they're doing.
Thank you for making this post!
I often make jokes about my depression and social anxiety, but it seriously makes me mad when people without the illness try to make jokes. But at the same time, I do think it helps people with depression to make jokes than it hurts them when others steal them. But at the same time, you can actually give yourself depression if you think it's 'cool' and it can change the chemical makeup of your brain. So I don't want more people getting stuck in the pit. It's a complicated topic that doesn't really have a solution. But I appreciate this post a lot, it helps bring the issue to light.
It’s not that people are offended that people without the mental illness are stealing their jokes, it’s that by making jokes like that, it’s encouraging more stereotypes and stigma that the world needs to get away from.
I don’t think it’s that simple to just one day create your own depression cause you want it, but it is possible for over a long period of time for people to want to develop a mental illness and self diagnose themselves, which also creates a negative correlation with mental illnesses by people considering it “attention seeking”.
But yes, it does need to be brought to light, and I’m glad that you think this is helping people!! :)
I'm reading these comments and am impressed by the maturity and sensibility in all of your comments, it's nice that this is such a non-toxic platform for the phandom, some groups for it take it over the top and get obsessive but this amino seems chill and it's nice how the people here one another :sparkling_heart: