Please don’t text me at 5 pm on Wednesdays, I’ll be at therapy. Even before typing that out, my heart begins to race at the thought of others peeking over my shoulder, reading my writing, and finding out my well-kept secret. Well, now it’s out: I see a shrink. 

     I first started meeting with my therapist last May and it has utterly altered the course of my life. I’m a swimmer and have practice after school each night — this proved to be a problem when scheduling sessions with my therapist led to an outstanding number of missed practices. I felt the need to keep the talk surrounding my mental well-being “hush hush.” 

     I first approached my coach with a simple, “I have an appointment this Wednesday and will be missing practice.” However, this soon evolved into a weekly occurrence, and I realized I could no longer mask my absence as an “ambiguous appointment.” After careful consideration, I realized I shouldn’t have to hide where I will really be. 

     The mental health stigmas I’ve grown up with made me feel shame at the thought of seeking help through therapy. It is the “American way” to simply suck it up and push through, to get the job done no matter the consequences. Living in the competitive world of modern-day high school, I felt expected to accomplish things on my own, as if asking for help was a sign of weakness.

     When I first watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I was a young impressional preteen. While this movie is one of the better depictions of depression and anxiety in film, I should not have walked away from the ending credits admiring the life of a suicidal teenager with highly functioning PTSD. It is not difficult to make a movie about a topic as heavy as mental health: however, it is difficult to make an accurate movie about a topic as heavy as mental health. Movies and media are meant to entertain us, to draw us in, and keep us on the edge of our seats. When a form of entertainment is based on someone’s depression, anxiety, or disordered thinking, the illness itself is reduced to a plot point. 

     The way media sources portray mental illness affects the way our society views these topics and ultimately results in them being considered taboo. I love Billie Eilish as much as the next fatigued 15-year-old girl; however, with lyrics such as “Thought I could fly, so I stepped off the Golden. Nobody cried. Nobody even noticed,” it could be argued that her songs glamorize much of the gruesome realities of living with depression. I don’t believe Billie Eilish is to blame for this glamorization, that title belongs to the media. Tabloids and Tiktok don’t limit themselves to frilly song lyrics when addressing mental illness; they completely envelop the idea of mental health and spit it out in a pretty little package.

     Not only has mental illness been romanticized through film and song, but it has also been given its own aesthetic. According to The Establishment, the “Sad Girl” aesthetic is the idea that women are best when they are sad. The tall, dark, misunderstood woman is more desirable because she is easier manipulated by men. This idea that depression is a personality trait or a clothing trend is a direct result of the media’s wrong interpretations of what mental illness truly is. Mental illness is not crazy. It is not beautiful. It is not sensational. Mental health deserves to be talked about and discussed without the prying eyes of people seeking amusement.