The way we talk about the world shapes our experience of it. Further, Perception depends upon our interpretation of sensory experience.
The term Prevalence Inflation was coined by Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews who write that “if people are repeatedly told that mental health problems are common and that they might experience them… they might start to interpret any negative thoughts and feelings through this lens.”
This becomes the classic self-fulfilling prophecy where one is anxious about being anxious which makes them anxious and avoidant of social interaction which makes them more anxious and so on…
Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychologist at USC worries that for many young people, claiming an anxiety crisis or post-traumatic stress disorder has become like a status symbol. Is is a source of the psychological need for significance.
As much as there are positives coming out of destigmatization and increased awareness of mental health. It is likely that there is an unintended consequence of fetishizing and glamorizing mental illness — or at the very least a subtle encouraging of people to pathologize normal elements of the human experience labeling them as “illnesses” or “disorders”.
This leads to this trend: The human experience is being medicalized.
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