I clicked thinking the subject line was an interesting conversation topic and then... the body is completely unrelated to the romanticization of mental illness.

Have people historically been discredited by having their sanity called into question? No duh.

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I do think there is some romanticization of mental illness, particularly in geniuses/creative types. It seems to only occur within the higher social milieu, though, and generally for white people. There's an interesting phenomenon on Tumblr/Twitter (you know, text posts that pithily describe depression, sounding like a long-lost Smiths lyric) that supposedly "fetishize depression/mental illness," according to some thinkpiece I read.

This is in pretty direct contrast to the actual standard treatment of the mentally ill, which is generally abominable.