#i am sorry that people dont take common words seriously though im the cultural social sphere we live in though

[tuliptiger]

Just saw a post about a person being upset or frazzled that depression and anxiety are the "everyman" mental illness. I want to proceed this by saying I am NOT going to be shitting on this person at all and they have a point but I didn't quite agree with uhm the tone or everything about it.

I don't think it's wrong or bad that these two specific mental illnesses have a wider understanding and reach. They have been watered down for lack of a better term because they have come to mean many things including less debilitating symptoms and signs. This is not to say it's bad, I don't think. I think it's objectively good that more people are able to look at themselves and talk with medical professionals and be able to be helped for any severity be it minor or major.

And that was their main point of contention though because the more debilitating cases of anxiety and depression are taken less seriously when using the terms "depression" and "anxiety". I think that is completely a valid point and reasonable thing to be upset about.

However...

I do not think the answer is to "take back" the terms and that also isn't what they said or implied either. What I really heard from them and that post was "when I talk about my life altering devastating mental illness I want to be taken seriously and understood without having to go into detail or explain it" (because the last part can and is incredibly exhausting and frustrating especially if it is not outright understood or has a base assumption of the less debilitating ideas and versions). What I heard was "I want to be taken seriously". That ISN'T what they said but it is what I understood from it.

In which case the solution to this is for people to respect each other, listen to each other with good intentions and faith, and take each other seriously when we talk about ourselves. Unfortunately that's an individual and societal problem that runs a little too deep for this post.

As for the terms, there probably does need to be a language separation between severities of depression and anxiety even though there are rough versions of those already. Like social anxiety, moderate depression, major depressive disorder, chronic depression, oct, ptsd, etc. The very word depression has kind of lost it's oomf but I think for a relatively good reason. Maybe there should be an entire other word for major depression that doesn't include that phrase though to help with that communication gap. IDK. My two cents if that's worth anything.