highlights response hanna alkaf

Gianina:

It also made me think about how mental illnesses are often romanticised in the media nowadays, depression and anxiety are seen almost as a trend and are not taken as seriously as they should be. This however, is also the fault of certain people who misdiagnose themselves as being depressed, when in reality they aren’t.

The impacts of misrepresenting something so prevalent nowadays are huge because it affects not only our perceptions of the issue, the way we treat the mentally ill and also the way the mentally ill treat themselves. This means that many people are being misinformed about the issue and do not have the opportunity to make more informed choices regarding such situations. This made me realise how even one simple movie or one simple book, can override our existing perceptions and thoughts on a group of people, and influence our actions in some way.

This in itself reveals so much about how mental illnesses are not something that one can be completely cured of, and that it is not something to be “cured” but something that is “healed”.

Lorette:

I realise that this very common behaviour of having the stories and identities of people be reduced to their disabilities for commercial purposes and something that everyone else should be grateful not to have is thoughtless and demeaning to them and perpetuates the stigma that society has towards these groups of individuals.