There is absolutely nothing romantic about suffering from a Mental illness. Everyone who has ever gone through this will tell you the same. Yet it seems as though people, especially teenagers, think mental illness is something glamorous and something that separates them from the herd. They romanticize and glamorize it publicly on social media and similar websites, in particular, the world's most popular micro-blogging platform -- tumblr.

Mental gymnastics and self-diagnosis

This generation is obsessed with mental illness, but even more so, it is obsessed with romanticizing it.

Mental disorders are seen as quirky personality traits, and, somehow, a sign of greater intelligence.

A 2015 Harvard study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS), warned about the dangers of self-diagnosing over the internet, with the senior author Ateev Mehrotra stating: “It may be useful in patients who are trying to decide whether they should get to a doctor quickly, but in many cases, users should be cautious and not take the information they receive from online symptom checkers as gospel.”

Furthermore, in a study conducted by researchers at Microsoft titled "Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search," it was concluded that "the probability that the word “brain tumor” would come up in response to a web search for the symptom “headache” stood at 0.26, which is the same probability the diagnosis “caffeine withdrawal” received."

Clearly, self-diagnosing over the internet will, in most cases, lead to one thing: misdiagnosis.

The special snowflake syndrome

If you're feeling down, you might not be depressed. If you don't sleep well one night, you're not an insomniac. Eating disorders are not tragically beautiful and neither is suicide. If you're shy and introverted, you might not have social anxiety. If you don't pay attention in class, you might not be on the spectrum.

Self-harm isn't some glorious artistic project, it is a serious problem and a consequence of mental illness, something thousands of individuals actually go through every single day.

Glorifying and romanticizing mental illness does nothing but make those that are actually mentally ill feel more alienated and stigmatized. Self-diagnosing with mental illness to feel special and unique is insulting to those that are mentally ill, and, above all, irresponsible and wrong.