Why Americans Need to Stop Faking Mental Illness

This is an except from the book "How Not to Become a Millennial."  It highlights the record use of both legal and illegal drugs among the Millennial generation, but notes the absurdly high percent of mental illness this would imply Millennials have  It then posits the theory that - like many other things - some Millennials are faking mental illness to beget a whole host of benefits from society, ranging from anything like government checks to lower academic standards to simple pity.  Worse, many Millennials have used their mental illness to define them, deriving their only purpose and value in life from said mental illnesses, when in fact they have none.

This is by no means a purely Millennial phenomenon.  Many people from all post WWII generations are guilty of this, and it is increasing in frequency the younger generation you get.  But like other traits, it shows Americans in general are getting so lazy they will resort to any trait, ailment, disability, or disorder in order to have (what in their minds they think will be) an easier life.  And if they don't have one, they will make it up.

Consider purchasing the book below.

"CHAPTER 21 – NO, YOU DON’T HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS

What makes traits so attractive is you were born with them.  You didn’t “earn” becoming a male.  You didn’t “work” at becoming Latino.  You came that way fresh off the assembly line.  Not one calorie of energy was spent on getting you these traits (except on the behalf of your parents).  But despite these traits having no value, since they take no effort to “earn,” this makes them especially tempting to people’s inherent laziness.  Because if you can get society to pay you for something you were born with, or better yet, purpose and meaning in life because of a trait, that means you never have to spend a calorie of energy working in life. 

This is great if society has lost its collective mind enough to celebrate people born with particular traits, going so far as to even pay them.  And if you are lucky enough to have those traits, you can live in this delusional (though ultimately destructive) world.  But there is just one small problem for a rather large group of people - what if you were born with the “wrong” traits?  What if you were born male?  What if you were born white?  Or worst of all – GASP!- what if you were born both?

Here the Millennials have an ingenious solution allowing anybody of any race and any gender to cash in on the victimhood and intrinsic value rackets.  An idea so clever that even the much-hated white male can participate in the trait-giving gravy train – mental illness.

Whether you have a mental illness or not, if you can convince society you do, you can now make bank on that same victimhood/life-value racket everybody else is cashing in on.   If you have “ADD,” you can get your standards greatly lowered for your entire educational career.  If you’re “on the spectrum” you can qualify for a whole host of scholarships and financial aid.  If you have “depression” a whole host of labor laws now come into your favor.  If you suffer from “social anxiety disorder” you can excuse yourself from ever going out in life, taking a risk, or applying for a job.  And if you have “bi-polar disorder” you can not only collect disability from the taxpayer, but you can treat people like utter shit, blaming it all on a made up mental illness.

Faking a mental illness is the ultimate shield to cower behind because it abdicates you of having any responsibility to support yourself or be of value to society because you’re simply not mentally capable of doing so.  It even excuses you to be an outright sadist (as any man who has dated a hot chick who claims to have BPD can tell you).  But above all else, mental illness is the perfect trait to have in the victimhood racket because unlike race or gender it cannot be readily proved or disproved.  Anybody can have it.  Anybody can fake it.  And doctors/psychologists are only more than happy to officially ordain it because it’s more money in their pockets.

However, it needs to be stated up front not everybody who claims to have a mental illness is faking it.  Mental illness is a real thing.  Many unfortunate people do legitimately suffer from mental illness.  And you do not wish to be one of these people.  And it must also be stated that Millennials as a generation didn’t maliciously and consciously concoct this diabolical plan as if they were some criminal mastermind like The Joker.  Many Millennials were lied to by their parents and teachers about having a mental illness.  The environment they grew up in certainly had stressors that may look like mental illness, but are in fact just tough times or unfortunate circumstances.  And we needn’t highlight again the financial incentives the psychology/pharmaceutical industries have in every one of us having a mental disorder.  But like hell 50% of the population has a mental illness.  And like hell 1 in 4 Millennials are clinically depressed.  Like hell 1 in 4 college students need Adderall.  And I do not want to hear another lazy ass Millennial bragging about their “social anxiety disorder.”
   
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no way to calculate the percent of the Millennial (and overall) population that is faking mental illness.  Plus, who isn’t to say that over the course of life most people won’t suffer legitimate bouts of mental illness?  But if you use other countries that are not so wealthy nor so spoiled, or simply go back a generation or two, you can use those as baselines to ballpark the percent of the current cases of mental illnesses that are legitimate.  Furthermore, cynical and unscientific as this method may be, the mere application of Occam’s Razor would introduce a healthy dose of much-needed skepticism into this discussion.  Does our population really have anywhere between a 25% to 50% rate of mental illness? Or have we made it so profitable, either financially or emotionally, that weaker minded people are too tempted to claim they are mentally ill?  Also, have we become so soft and spoiled as a society that the normal amount of pain and discomfort that comes with everyday challenges is so harsh it “triggers” weaker people into thinking they have a mental illness?  And then there’s your anecdotal stories that did not exist 20 years ago where you know of people purposely faking a mental illness to get some kind of advantage in society (for example, I know two men who lied to their employers that they had ADD so they could telecommute).  When you view society through this cynical Occam’s lens, it’s obvious there’s at least some fakers out there abusing mental illness for ill-gotten gains and it’s not some token percent.  20%, 30%, even 80%?  It’s impossible to tell.  But it would not be the slightest bit shocking if it turns out 50% of cases are faked or at least over/misdiagnosed.

Appalling as it might be that millions of people are faking mental illness for attention, money, even purpose in life, doing so comes at a great cost.  Like putting race or gender at the center of your life, you’re living a lie, guaranteeing that same life of misery, poverty, loneliness, and destitution.  But there is an added cost that comes with faking a mental illness for the rest of your life.  Namely, you have to fake having a mental illness.  And that makes a bad situation much, much worse.

The absolute best outcome with this strategy is if you are consciously conniving and amoral, and know full well what you’re doing.  You do not have a mental illness.  You’re perfectly, mentally healthy.  You are just willing to fake some symptoms, claim you got a case of the social anxieties, walk into a compliant doctor’s office to have them sign off on it, and go get whatever benefits society has voted you to have.  It could be telecommuting privileges, it could be SSI, it could be scholarships, it doesn’t matter.  You take your drugs, flush them down the toilet, and go on living life on an easier mode.  One almost has to tip their hat to this Machiavellian approach, because if society is going to be stupid enough to award people for traits, you might as well cash in on the offer.

A lesser outcome is you “deep down inside” know you’re not mentally ill, but still can’t resist the temptation of either the financial benefits, the laziness it excuses, or even something as petty as the popularity and acceptance it confers upon you.  The problem here is that whatever social or professional life you’ve built on this lie goes away the second you can no longer keep up the façade.  If you claimed you had social anxiety in high school because you think it would beget pity and acceptance, then you better keep it up until graduation day because it will all go away if you don’t.  If you’re in with the emo-kids at college and you’ve gained their comradery by playing somebody who’s a brooding English major who suffers from depression, you’re not going to be invited to the poetry slams anymore once they find out you were lying.  And there’s entire professions within the non-profit, academic, and government world where the more disabilities you have the more cache you have in your career.   If you’ve built any part or parcel of your career on a made up mental disability, you get to stay on stage forever lest you care to end your career.  You essentially damn yourself to a part time job of being somebody you’re not forever, all for a little leg up in your career or social life.

Worse than that is where you actually start to believe the lie.  You are so pathetic and valueless you place your entire life’s value on having a mental disability you don’t have.  Deep down inside you know you don’t have a mental illness, but you are so lazy at your core you consciously choose the life of a mentally ill person to beget pity, assistance, and worth because a life of learning to code, perform dentistry, or wrench on diesel engines is just too much work for you.  But while you’re thinking you’re dodging a bullet or being very clever, there is just one problem in believing you have a mental illness when you don’t. It’s a guarantee you will inevitably develop one over time.  And when you throw that on top of the destitution, loneliness, poverty, and despair that comes with living a lie, you’ll be begging you had placed value in something as simple and innocent as gender.

But the absolute worst outcome when it comes to having a mental illness is not even having a mental illness at all.  It’s where you were an otherwise mentally healthy individual and either through your parents, teachers, victimhood pimps (politicians, psychologists, counselors, etc.), or simply not having your father around, you were convinced you were mentally ill.  Here we should have nothing but pity for the poor millions of Millennials (and others) who were misdiagnosed as children simply because their parents didn’t love them, their teachers didn’t want to deal with them, the psychology industry wanted to profit off of them, or their dads just weren’t around.  Matter of fact, in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way, the mental pain and suffering that is the result of being misdiagnosed with a mental illness should be considered a mental illness in itself, given its own name and entered in the DSM MCMXXVII (it should also be grounds for tremendous lawsuits against teachers, counselors, and therapists who misdiagnosed them).  Regardless, there are easily millions of adults today who were lied to about their mental health in the past, who directly mentally suffer from that misdiagnosis now.  And many still live today under the erroneous assumption they had/still have a mental illness.

Once again, young people today need to look at the Millennials and ask themselves some serious questions when it comes to mental health. 

Do you really have a mental illness or just shitty parents, shitty teachers, and a shitty support network?

Are you mentally ill or is your dad just not around or non-participatory in your life?

Are you depressed or is your life and current environment so harsh that the mentally healthy response would actually be to be depressed?

Were you so spoiled in life, facing no real problems that any normal problem normal people face scares you to the point you can’t function?  Not that you have “social anxiety disorder?”  You just can’t handle everyday pain and strife?

And if none of those are the case, do you really want to fake having a mental illness all for some free taxpayer money, lower standards, pity, and attention?  Even going to the extent of taking mind-altering drugs to keep up the façade or merely to use as a crutch?  Because if you don’t have a mental illness now, you soon will.  And a life without mental health is not only a wasted one, but a tortured one as well."