For far too long, topics relating to depression, mood disorders, and anxiety have been labeled taboo. It’s time to tear off the veil of secrecy surrounding mental health issues.
Sadly, those who were brave enough to come forward with their mental health struggles were frequently stigmatized by society at large. As a result of this intense, unwarranted judgment, many individuals felt there was no choice but to keep their disorders a secret.
With the passage of time, we’ve seen a turn of the tides in the US surrounding topics relating to mental illness. Now that research sheds light on how common these issues are, many people are encouraged to speak out about them. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 individuals in the US struggle with issues relating to mental health.
Celebrities open up about mental health issues
For decades, mega-stars did their best to present only the most polished and sparkling versions of themselves and even give off an aura of mystery.
But nowadays, many celebrities are opening up to fans about their mental health struggles. Consumers of pop culture seem hungry for shared stories and experiences that are transparent and relatable rather than glamorized perfection. This cultural shift permits movie stars and pop sensations to get real with the world about personal issues that are far from picture-perfect.
Eliminating the stigma associated with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and more
When megastars get vulnerable and share about their behavioral health issues, individuals who are battling with mental illness feel seen. Knowing that their favorite actors and musicians also deal with anxiety, OCD, and depression can help so many people feel less alone.
And, fans can feel less ashamed about their own personal struggles when the people they look up to face similar obstacles.
If Selena Gomez can release an entire documentary about her experiences with bipolar disorder, it takes a weight off of people’s shoulders. If Megan The Stallion can shamelessly drop a track called “Anxiety,” fans can feel a sense of validation for their emotions. There’s something so comforting about knowing these mega-stars really are “just like us.”
But are these celebrities oversharing about their mental health?
Are Celebrities too candid with fans?
Not everyone is on board with this newfound transparency. On the other hand, a growing number of pop culture consumers think these celebs’ first-world issues have no relation to real-world problems and leave them totally out of touch.
Considering how wealthy most A-list stars are…some are convinced that celebrities will never understand the tribulations that lower and middle-class people face. As a result, some argue that celebrities have resources and access to things most of us could never dream of so they should have less mental stress.
Back in 2022, Bella Hadid was famously dragged when a resurfaced clip featured her crying when she couldn’t have a designer bag.
Of course, we’re all aware that Kendall Jenner has faced years of criticism for using her platform to talk about her crippling anxiety,
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“There is going to be those people that say, ‘Oh, OK, what does she have to worry about? What does she have to be anxious about?” the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star said in an interview with Vogue.
While Jenner goes on to acknowledge her privilege, she also says that fame doesn’t automatically preclude her troubles with mental illness. The reality star adds, “I’m still a human being at the end of the day.”
And let’s not forget during the height of the pandemic, when A-listers were brutally attacked online for complaining about being stuck inside their homes despite living in million-dollar mansions. In this instance, the masses were not so quick to sympathize with celebrities’ complaints.
When Ellen Degeneres whined about being unable to go outside during the pandemic and compared it to “being in jail,” the general public called her out.
Sophie Turner and other celebrities use their platform to advocate for mental health
But the notion that celebrities are out of touch when it comes to their first-world struggles is only half the argument.
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan stirred the pot when he suggested many celebrities “fake” mental health issues in an effort to boost their careers. “Sadly, I know a lot of well-known people (not The Rock) who’ve jumped on the ‘victimhood’ bandwagon to get positive publicity for themselves,” the controversial figure tweeted in 2019. “They do those with genuine mental illness a great disservice.”
His controversial take was met with a wave of backlash from celebs and the general public alike. Game of Thrones superstar Sophie Turner, who is an avid advocate of mental health, clapped back at the Good Morning Britain host.
She responded in a heated tweet, saying, "Or maybe they have a platform to speak out about it and help get rid of the stigma of mental illness, which affects 1 in 4 people in the UK per year. But please go ahead and shun them back into silence.”
Sophie Turner via Twitter
There seems to be a divide over how people feel about celebrities sharing intimate details regarding their mental health affairs. Whether you believe stars are splattering personal concerns all over social media simply to remain relevant or if you genuinely think they do a terrific job destigmatizing mental health problems is entirely up to you.
Personally, I love it when people like Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande reveal their struggles with depression and anxiety because it makes me feel less sensitive and ashamed about my own inner frailties. And I feel less alone.
The way I see it, when someone like Kendall Jenner gets brutally honest about her journey with crippling anxiety, it creates a sense of unity for everyone out there who is dealing with the same thing. Kendall, along with a slew of other celebrities, leverages her platform to build a fervent discourse on topics that have been swept under the rug for far too long.
Climate Change and the Death of Hope in 2020
What does hope look like if our society is incapable of facing reality?
A 2020 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that polar ice sheets are melting in line with "worst-case scenario" climate models.
In Antarctica and Greenland, melting ice sheets have been dumping hundreds of billions of tons of fresh water into the ocean each year, at a rate up to three times as fast as in recent decades.
This process not only raises water levels—causing dramatic increases in catastrophic storm surges—it alters the salinity, current dynamics, and acidity of the oceans in ways that have dire ecological and meteorological impacts. It is guaranteed to produce both predictable crises and unforeseen catastrophes. And nobody cares.
Why would they? We're in the midst of a global pandemic that is triggering an unprecedented economic crisis. It has caused food insecurity to affect millions more families than were already struggling, and may soon result in tens of millions of Americans losing their homes.
On top of that, California has faced another devastating wildfire season (including another "gender-reveal" gone wrong) amid a record-breaking heatwave and the now-familiar drought conditions, all while a tumultuous hurricane season in the Atlantic is producing powerful storms at a faster rate than in any year since we started keeping track.
The world—and the US in particular—has more pressing concerns than melting ice in 2020, don't we? Well, considering the fact that the "worst-case scenario" for climate change could bring about the collapse of civilization within 30 years, no we really don't.
We can't make the changes to avoid that scenario overnight. It will take years of change that will need to be done sooner, rather than later. Oh, and now scientists are advising the need for a new model of a worse worst-case scenario...
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked unforeseen havoc on our society, but it's really just a snapshot of the kind of devastation that climate change will inevitably bring about without the kind of transformational action that is beginning to seem impossible.
Congress can't agree to help people keep their homes during an unprecedented unemployment crisis. What chance do we have that they will stand up to lobbyists and big-business donors to restructure our economy into a sustainable model? Does it even matter how big the threat is? Does it matter that everything we're facing is only going to get worse?
Because not only will hurricanes, droughts, floods, heat waves, food shortages, wildfires, gradually get worse and worse as a result of climate change—until the crises of 2020 become a fond memory—but infectious diseases are likely to reach epidemic and pandemic levels more frequently.
With traditional food sources destroyed by weather events and the changing oceans—along with animals migrating due to deforestation—people will be exposed to more exotic animals, and non-human viruses will have more opportunity to make the leap.
With more and more heat waves reaching and exceeding body temperature for days at a time, microbes that can't currently survive inside our bodies will begin adapting into dangerous pathogens.
And with tens of millions of people being displaced by catastrophic weather events and conflicts arising from scarce resources—most of them forced into crowded conditions—infectious diseases new and old will spread more rapidly.
We will perpetually be dealing with some new epidemic. Some urgent disaster is always going to occupy our attention and energy while we continue to ignore the underlying, apocalyptic cause. And all of these problems will only make it easier for the rising strain of global fascism to demonize outsiders, and further isolate nations from the kind of international cooperation we so desperately need.
At what point are we expecting to have fewer "pressing concerns" than we have right now? In what idyllic future will we have the peace and security to start focusing on addressing the hazy, foundational threat that is likely to destabilize everything we know?
As a pandemic rages, America's two-parties continue to be incapable of cooperating to help the American people—of making the other side look good. Our aging, wealthy ruling class doesn't take threats facing younger generations and the working class seriously. And this familiar rot of a two-party stalemate is even more evident in the challenge of forming a consensus behind pragmatic, necessary action like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's Green New Deal.
Instead of backing it, and favoring the long-term habitability of our only planet, people prefer to scoff at an imagined plan to steal their hamburgers. And corporate-owned media empires are happy to serve up the team-sports drama of it all while the end of everything we know rushes toward us. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing for global societal destabilization.
The dynamics of American "democracy" under capitalism seem to be wholly incapable of saving us, and the structure of the military industrial complex will no doubt view the crises that arise from displaced people and global unrest as a series of nails to be handled by their ever-more-sophisticated hammers.
There is a famous quote of uncertain attribution that says that, within our system, "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism." It's becoming increasingly easy to see that end to the world looming, while the armor protecting the forces of for-profit ecological ruination show no signs of weakening.
In astrophysics there is a concept known as the Fermi Paradox that questions why—if the conditions for producing intelligent life are not exceedingly rare—we do not see any evidence of other civilizations spread across the vastness of space.
The Fermi Paradox II — Solutions and Ideas – Where Are All The Aliens?www.youtube.com
There are various responses that may explain that observation, but among the most popular is the idea that civilizations just don't last. The forces of progress that allow creatures to develop technology like radio transmitters and spacecraft may lead inevitably to world-ending weapons or climate collapse.
Whether that's true throughout the universe, it seems increasingly to be the case for the only confirmed civilization in the Milky Way. For all our amazing advances, we remain stupid apes,—incapable of planning beyond next month, and constantly discovering new and clever ways to kill ourselves.
It's customary—in an article this dark—to end on a hopeful note. That makes sense. It's generally considered rude to actively ruin a stranger's day. But isn't it also rude to lie? Because I'm not convinced that there is any real hope for our civilization—not in the long run.
Sure, we can find some ways to delay and mitigate the damage. Pointing to 2050 as the likely end is probably overly pessimistic. If we do a surprisingly good job of adapting, legislating, and cooperating—and also get very lucky—we may have a couple good generations left.
In that case, most of the people reading this are likely to be dead of all the familiar causes before the total collapse of world order. Only our children or grandchildren—and however many generations after—will be forced to face the immense suffering of a new dark age.
That is the sad shade of fate that we should all be fighting for with desperate passion—because it's a hair shy of pure black void. Better than that, at this point, seems to be in the realm of fantasy.
We've already done so much irreversible harm. And the path we're on is so resistant to change. It would be wonderful—joyous—to be proven wrong, but the society and the way of life we know can't last. And there's no indication we'll be able to replace it in time.
Maybe our only realistic hope is to drastically lower our expectations. Short of saving the world as we know it, maybe we can keep portions of the planet habitable—maybe an enclave in the region around Colorado and another in the Mongolian steppe will hang onto less-than-hellish conditions. Maybe we need to start planning for the post-apocalypse.
With preparation, little pockets around the world could maintain a lifestyle that's worth living for some sizable remainder of humankind—even if they have to do without most of the luxuries afforded by global stability—the electronics, transportation, medicines, supply chains, entertainment, and communication we take for granted.
A return to something closer to pre-industrial conditions is likely for survivors of the collapse, but maybe—for some fraction of the population—life won't become a living hell.
And maybe, somewhere out in the universe, there is an some alien species that has managed to survive the pitfalls of progress and achieve a sustainable, equitable, idyllic life. Maybe they're watching us, waiting to see how we handle ourselves—to see if we learn our lesson from this impending apocalypse—before they swoop in and share their utopia.
If we peer far enough into distant uncertainty, it's possible to conceive of something better after the end of Western Civilization—after likely billions of deaths and immeasurable suffering.
Does that count as hope? Is that enough to spit up the black pill of despair?