Significant Writing Project
Jaelen Jackson
English 110
Jacob Oliver
11/22/2024
Are you Mental Healthy?
The modern world asks a lot of us as a species in general with things like gender and cultural norms, social media, and technology in overall. Often, we overlook things as important as mental health to keep up with today’s society. A question that arises for me from this fact is, what does it mean to be mentally healthy today? To me, it looks like balancing things like social media and cultural norms, and personal relationships. Additionally, the environment an individual is in plays a key role in mental health because as a race, we are wired to react to what is around us. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt highlight this in their essay “coddling of the American mind” as they confront the issues colleges can cause when shielding students. The unfamiliar environment college brings can be a lot for students, causing them to have mental health kickbacks as mentioned earlier. This is a normal part of life as we age, learning how to adapt and thrive in new environments is an important skill we have been using since we were children and will continue to use, I find it detrimental for colleges to take that aspect of “figuring it out” away. Meanwhile, Esme Weijun Wang’s essay, “High Functioning” works to highlight not only societal stigma when it comes to mental health, but stigma from within those who are meant to treat others diagnosed with mental health disorders. Lastly, Jon Ronson works to deepen the understanding of mental health stigma from within the health care system and underline the effects social media can have on the human mind. Given all of that, my belief is that our comfort level in our environment and the people around us play a huge role in our day-to-day mental health status. Although the intent behind shielding students with things like trigger warnings come from a good place, in my past I’ve found it more disruptive than beneficial to my learning and mental well-being.
Firstly, when it comes to the environment we are placed in, there are multiple factors that could cause issues with balancing mental health components. Personally, at my previous college, Bates, I felt the overall culture caused some of these mental imbalances for me. As mentioned above, things like trigger warnings are put in place to protect students, with that said there is a line in my eyes that can be crossed. Overprotecting students is something I felt affected me negatively at Bates. Additionally general beliefs in that environment didn’t conform to my own. Consequently, I felt speaking my own opinion would bring me issues or back lash from not only my peers but professors as well. Because of this feeling of not fitting into the cultural norms there, I saw an overall drop in my mental well-being, simply because it was extremely isolating thing, this then led to things like going to less classes, frankly because I felt I couldn’t speak my mind in them and consequently struggling academically. The essay “Coddling of the American mind” highlights some of the same themes. Lukianoff and Haidt go on to say, “In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an email to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.” This is a prime example of how seriously conformity to the norm is taken at some universities. In an attempt to educate their peers, these students were shut down by others because they were operating outside of cultural norms. Not only is this just soft in my eyes, but it also allows the actual microaggressions from those outside of the Asian community to continue to thrive.
The importance of how a good environment can affect your mental health became clear to me when I transferred to UNE. The overall feeling of disconnection from the masses passed and I felt more obligated to not only go to class but do my best to thrive academically simply because I can voice my actual opinion. At UNE I feel less like a child that needs to be taken care of and more like my own person that can speak on what I believe to be true. Because of this I find it much easier to attend classes, and the overall pressure of fitting in here isn’t necessarily a thing for me. Additionally, I feel like regardless of where I stand on an issue, voicing my opinion won’t cause offense to others. On top of this I feel as though people here may agree with my opinions as opposed to Bate’s where everything had to conform to the cultural norm.
Now with all that being said, Wang’s essay, “High functioning” focuses on a different path when it comes to mental health in this country. In her work, Wang focuses on the stigma around mental health that can cause multiple issues for people attempting to get treatment. As a society mental health in America is somewhat frowned upon, for men asking for help, and talking about your feelings and what’s going on can be emasculating because of societal norms and may lead them to bottle up emotions and feelings of distress. Meanwhile for women I feel they don’t want to be seen as “crazy” or different from others. Consequently, people that do have mental health disorders and don’t seek treatment because of stigma often have mental breaks, often being very serious situations for example hurting oneself or attempts of suicide. This often leads to hospitalization (based on the support system of the individual) this is where Wang’s essay is able to highlight an even deeper facet of the stigma against Mental health here in the States. Wang goes on to say “Because we were in the Yale Psychiatric Institute (now the Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital), many of those hospitalized were Yalies, and therefore considered bright people who’d simply wound up in bad situations. We had already proved ourselves capable of being high-functioning, and thus contained potential if only we could be steered onto the right track. In the middle of the hierarchy were those with anorexia and bipolar disorder. I was in this group, and was perhaps even ranked as highly as the depressives, because I came from Yale. The patients with schizophrenia landed at the bottom — excluded from group therapy, seen as lunatic and raving, and incapable of fitting into the requirements of normalcy.” This shows that not only is there stigma throughout the overall population here in the U.S, there’s also stigma from within the health care system. I personally have experience with this as I was in a psychiatric unit at one point and saw some of the same trends. I was treated as high functioning, meaning health care providers treated me as human, had normal conversations with me, urged to join group sessions daily, and I was only medicated once a day. Meanwhile, those with different diagnosis’ then I did not get the same treatment. None of the care providers gave any attention to the “lower functioning” patients attending groups. Additionally, I found that these patients were getting medicated up to three times a day, to my one. This was significant for me because I could see the difference in their behavior, they became almost sedated, unable to stay awake regardless of the situation. Those who were diagnosed with things like schizophrenia are an example of the group that I saw get this same treatment.
On top of this, Jon Ronson in his Ted Talk called “Strange Answers” highlights and solidifies Wang’s claim even more. Ronson tells the story of a man named Tony who was convicted of assault, and in turn faked insanity to avoid jail and get sent to a psychiatric hospital that he thought would be a much smoother ride. Although his statements to get him put in that position were a bit extreme, Tony was sent to a hospital called Broadmoor, previously known as “Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane.” This place was primarily for serial killers or as Ronson calls them “the people who can’t help themselves.” (2:42) As you can imagine, Tony’s first reaction to his placing was realizing jail was a better option, and in turn he went to a health care professional in Broadmoor and told them this was a misunderstanding. Now instead of accessing the situation again and confirming that this man didn’t belong in a mental facility like that, the doctors at Broadmoor began to find “obscurities” in his behavior to keep him there. As of a result of this, the doctors summarized because of his choice to fake madness, he had traits of a psychopath, and therefor felt they had the jurisdiction to keep him in Broadmoor. This not only furthers the trend of mistreatment in the health care system, but it also highlights how subjective mental health diagnosis’ can be. Tying back to my earlier claim, the environment has just as much of an effect on our mental health as any other component. Simply because of the environment Tony was in, it was assumed he had some sort of mental condition and consequently was diagnosed with something he more than likely has no traits of.
Overall, these three pieces of work are able to highlight in different ways why it can be so difficult to be mentally healthy in today’s world. Whether it be the environment you’re placed in not being a fit for you, or societies stigma’s not allowing us to fully express ourselves and ask for help, and even if one gets to the point of asking for help, Ronson underlines the fact that societies stigmas don’t stay at the door when you check into a psychiatric facility. With that being said, regardless of the disadvantage we have because of those three facts, being somebody who isn’t afraid to leave environments that don’t suit them or ask for help regardless of how your peers may look at you, can help you be mentally healthy as well as just happier with your quality of life overall. I know personally both of those things changed everything for my mental status.
I chose this writing project specifically because it was my third essay of the year. I feel I was able to go into depth appropriately in areas that needed detail. This was somewhat of a struggle for me in my earlier essays. It mainly shines through in the length of this essay, as I was writing I began to question if it was too long while with my first two essays I was worried about getting enough on the page. Additionally I felt the evidence and personal connections I used in this essay helped emphasize and underline my thesis the best out of these three prompts. Lastly this prompt asked for us to incorporate three of sources of our choice, while the other two essays were one to two sources. I feel I did this successfully and as said before I was able to back my thesis well with the chosen sources and personally opinions.
