Destigmatization and Profit from Struggle

Prince Harry's livestream session highlights how relatable - and lucrative - experiencing certain types of mental illness has become

Prince Harry continues his quest to garner attention by playing up his role as victim and another doctor demonstrates the parasitic, profit-driven machinery of the psychology industrial complex. Just another day in the psychologically damaging climate of well-being promotion, feelings first, self-care obsession and incentivization of claiming status as a sufferer.

This climate promotes narcissism and victimhood and undermines resilience, all of which is harmful to individual well-being. But even further, stunts like those of Prince Harry demonstrate how disconnected from reality public ideas about mental illness have become.

There is a deep hypocrisy in most of the current calls to destigmatize mental illness. While common diagnoses like those of depression, anxiety and even stress, are continually advocated for in destigmatization movements, mental health awareness campaigns, and well-being efforts, attention to the gritty, less socially normative, and often more damaging diagnoses is generally absent. We are expected to treat those with mental illness with care and kindness, but only if their suffering is relatable.

Go back, if you can, to 2022, and consider the responses to Amber Heard and her alleged mental illness, when the public, and even the psychologist from Depp’s team, seemed content with the stigmatization of Heard in their portrayal of her severe mental illness.  As would be expected in a trial, there was disagreement from experts as to the nature of her condition: it was put forth that she suffers with PTSD (by her side) or borderline and histrionic personality disorders (by his side).

The different interpretations are illustrative. Many are relatively familiar with PTSD, the diagnosis gaining attention from advocates for military personnel and domestic violence sufferers in recent decades. It is ideally suited for victimhood status, as sufferers must first experience a trauma. As victims, such individuals become protected - only a moral derelict would malign a victim. However, the diagnosis of personality disorders are more rare and foreign, and therefore apparently available as fodder for mocking and vilification. Her described symptoms were extreme, jarring, and non-normative. The portrayals described not a victim, but a monster. Her team likely chose to emphasize the PTSD diagnosis to arouse sympathy and compassion, his to arouse scorn and distancing.

So much time and effort have been spent on destigmatizing the more normative end of the mental illness spectrum that many have developed a distorted picture of what true mental illness looks like. Further, such efforts have largely resulted in continuous societal and institutional pushes for individuals to check-in with their emotions and view even the smallest upset as a sign of a potential problem. And skyrocketing rates of self-reported suffering suggest this push has worked.

While these efforts are largely well-meaning in encouraging people to recognize their suffering and increase help-seeking, they have been usurped by a victimhood culture that seeks to claim status from experiencing hardship where little exists.  Furthermore, this focus has allowed for the continued stigmatization of those suffering from disorders that are in many cases more severe and accompanied with more challenging social consequences, such as on the schizophrenic spectrum or, as in Heard’s case, borderline personality disorder. Contrast this with Prince Harry’s mental health struggles, where the picture of mental illness is relatable, common, and normative. In fact, it’s so normative and relatable as to warrant a livestream event.

The difficulty is that more severe mental illnesses are often the very opposite - difficult to relate to, uncommon, and hard to observe without distress. Public attention is generally absent in campaigns seeking to destigmatize or increase funding for access to treatment for individuals who suffer from the this grittier side of mental illness.

This is not to say that suffering from anxiety or depression are not real or that those who struggle with trauma should be maligned or denied treatment. It is simply to point out that the full spectrum of suffering is often ignored, and often at the expense of those with the most severe need. While some may benefit from exposure to the process of working through trauma we’ve been promised in the livestream, perhaps it would be worth considering taking the $33.09 one would have paid to indulge in Prince Harry’s victim-driven narcissism and use it for a worthier cause.