Raven+Y’s+2015+OpEd+Article

**Romanticism of Depression on Tumblr**
When you go on tumblr and type in “#depression”, what will you see? Most likely creatively decorated cigarette boxes or an angsty teenager in a Nirvana shirt. Phrases such as "stressed, depressed, but well dressed” are being thrown around the internet haphazardly, making depression seem like it’s just something to put on your “to-do” list. The romanticism of mental illnesses on social media is prominent and enables young adults to believe that being depressed is the new cool thing to do. Many tumblr users are actually depressed, but the enablement of blogging about how “beautiful” being depressed is, it encourages them to neglect seeking medical help and continue being sad.

Tumblr started off as community where people could fall into and connect with people who shared similar interests, but some parts of it has evolved into something different. It became the social norm for people to label themselves as depressed because they saw some soft grunge blog that was posting pictures of cut wrists with some black and white filter. Depression isn’t listening to Lana Del Rey, it isn’t wearing your $200 Doc Martens, it isn’t putting glitter in a toilet bowl and taking artsy pictures of it, it isn’t dying your hair pink and wearing black lipstick.

Because of the constant romanticism of depression it actually gives an impression that depression isn’t that serious, when it is in fact, as of 2008 it is the tenth leading cause of death resulting in almost one million people dead by suicide each year. How is this okay? How do we as a society prevent this from happening? I truly believe that the first step to remind our youth how depression is not a “beautiful” thing and neither is death.

It’s one thing to go on tumblr seeking help from others who have suffered or are suffering depression, but it is another to romanticize the subject and mutilate it into something it’s not. It’s okay to uphold your hipster status on tumblr and post pictures of your artfully running mascara, but don’t hashtag “#depression #selfharm #sad” underneath it. Depression is a serious matter and it needs to be treated as such.