Nowadays, people are always heard using terms like “depressed” and “OCD” to describe their actions or feelings when they are in fact not suffering from these disorders.

Diseases such as eating disorders, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic attacks, anxiety and bipolar disorder are actual issues for people that are truly diagnosed with them. While people not clinically diagnosed can still have these disorders, they are probably not as common as they seem in today’s culture even though people are constantly using these words to exaggerate their everyday emotions.

Mental health problems are not something to be joked about nor taken lightly. It should be understood that these disorders are nouns and not adjectives. Using these disorders is rude and disrespectful to the people who have them and trivializes the disorders themselves. People need to realize the severity of them and treat people who suffer from them accommodatingly. Mental disorders are not harmless or something that people can easily overcome and could potentially lead to self-harm or even suicide.

These disorders will never be truly understood if everyone claims to have them by turning them into hyperboles. Using these words in such a manner often makes individuals seem ignorant and uneducated about the obstacles that people with mental disorders are forced to overcome. While it may not seem like occasionally using these terms to describe something is a big deal, it could end up greatly offending someone who suffers or knows someone who suffers from a mental disorder. We as a society need to educate ourselves about mental disorders and realize that we should be using them in the correct connotation.