5 ms·
Your linked wikipedia article describes behaviors or emotions spreading through social groups, but this doesn't mean that mental illness spreads through social
by dymk 5y ago
Your linked wikipedia article describes behaviors or emotions spreading through social groups, but this doesn't mean that mental illness spreads through social groups. "Contagion" doesn't mean "illness", it means "meme".
Is there actually research showing that mental illnesses spread through social groups?
- thepasswordis 5y agoI'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Behaviors and emotions are descriptive of the "issue" part of mental health issues. Behaviors and emotions are the symptoms.
- dymk 5y agoI think I'm not understanding your initial point - are you saying that these apps need to find people with mental health issues (which makes sense), or that these apps are incentivized to start inducing mental health issues in people in order to increase their customer base, and that's something we need to worry about? I see in your initial comment, you talk about these apps diagnosing people and that causing somebody to develop the actual disease (I guess like a reverse placebo).
- irjustin 5y agoOP is trying to say you might have some tendencies that aren't problematic, but once you find a group who normalizes or somehow inadvertently encourages (i.e. via searching for profits) those behaviors that it turns into a real problem. Whether that set of behaviors is just a behavioral problem or a diagnosable disease, I'll leave that to the experts.
- aspaceman 5y agoYes. The most common are those experienced by young people- teenaged girls. Ex: eating disorders, self harm, and personality disorders. There's also been recent findings relating to involuntary movement disorders. (Women claim to have tourettes like symptoms. They watched a lot of social media -> picked up involuntary habits that look similar. Not tourettes, but a psychological issue.) Could start here for research: > Findings in this literature are consistent with social modeling/learning of NSSI increasing risk of initial engagement in NSSI among individuals with certain individual and/or psychiatric characteristics. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13811118.2013.748404?casa_token=RDTJ5wpOu2cAAAAA%3AHCWfz3bwk_CZ5lMWJQ_I2IWlGKQG-CQv4aRfNHLNY-4MRAORk2tonN4KBA7MV2MW6hXCuPoDcxkFyA https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13811118.2013.7... NSSI meaning non-suicidal self injury.
- deepnotderp 5y agoYes, see eg suicide clusters
- aspaceman 5y agoThis may be off-topic, but I first learned of this via the Japanese anime: "Welcome to the NHK" - has stuck with me ever since.