Anxiety Braggers - How Mental Health Got Competitive

We live in acutely pressured times, where colleagues try to out-stress one another and friends throw around words like OCD, anxiety and depression. Has mental health become the latest battleground for social competitiveness? Annie Brookstone investigates.

- Annie Brookstone

It’s a typical Sunday afternoon, you’ve returned home from a pub lunch and are curled up on the couch trying to bat away the sunday blues. While blocking out the fact that in just a few hours you’ll be back at your desk.

You take out your phone for an idle Instagram scroll and come across a meme that makes you laugh: it’s a stock image of a woman weeping with the words “The feeling when even your depression has depression” across it in bold white. You double-tap and forward it on to your work wife, who replies with a crying emoji. Over the past decade, the world has evolved more rapidly than at any other period, in many ways for the better — tutorials on how to bleach your hair now exist rather than having to just chance it, you can order katsu curry from that tiny Japanese joint in town with the click of a button and, increasingly, mental health is a topic discussed openly and with compassion, rather than hidden and battled in private. It’s a luxury that our parents’ generation was deprived of —there are even dates dedicated to opening up about wellbeing, like R U OK? Day in September. Celebrities such as Demi Lovato, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Russell Brand frequently speak out about their struggles with conditions such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder — and, in turn, give the green light to a million voices to respond with: “Yes, that’s how I feel, too!” The corporate landscape has also changed, with bosses who acknowledge mental health issues praised in public.

COMMON MISUSE