Here we go again, the elephant in the room: are mental health issues just made-up feelings crazy people have, or is it a real, science-backed problem people face? If you have never dealt with mental health problems, then honestly, I do not blame you for being skeptical because it is hard to believe in something that you cannot “see”. Now with everything online, it is hard to trust certain websites from other to determine what is false and what is not, like if mental disorders are scientifically proven. I found three unreliable sources and three reliable on mental illness that I thought were interesting to read and compare.

For my unreliable, I first found one post on Reddit yesterday, and it was a user saying how he does not believe in most mental disorders because they are just excuses for people to make themselves feel better. Some other people on the same page also said how they feel people use mental disorders as a trend-setter, as it is almost a fun bonding experience. I also found a picture on Tumblr saying, “you do not have a chemical imbalance… you have a brain”, insinuating that mental illness is scientifically false. I read another article from a blog called Return of Kings that stated how women fake mental illness so that they can drink more alcohol, do more drugs, and get more attention. These blogs and posts are unreliable as there is no scientific or accurate data to back up these opinions.

I decided to look up reliable websites regarding mental health. From the National Center for Biotechnology Information, they stated that scientists have concluded that mental disorders can be developed from multiple brain changes, such as its change in its structure or its changes in its chemical makeup. One of the more common mental disorders, bipolar disorder, I decided to look up to learn about its scientific background. From Latuda (an FDA-approved medication for bipolar disorder), bipolar disorder is caused by a decrease in the neurotransmitter serotonin and a fluctuating amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine. These fluctuating amounts of both neurotransmitters causes moods and emotions to go up and down, causing bipolar disorder. Lastly, from WebMD, they explained how mental disorders can be derived from abnormal nerve cell circuits (in the brain) that are not functioning properly, so the neurotransmitters are not communicating properly, leading to mental disorders.

Overall, I am not taking away one thing: mental disorders are not simple and they are very complex. But, as I first compared unreliable sources to reliable sources, you can see how people can write about extremely untrue statements, and when you are trying to look up facts about a topic, credible sources are the best to trust, not social media platforms like Instagram or Tumblr. The best way to determine if sources are reliable is if they are government based, if they are from a science institution, or if they are scientific articles. If you compare the unreliable to the reliable, you can see how the unreliable are from random people on the internet writing opinions, while the reliable are written from doctors or scientists. Also, look at the hyperlinks; if it ends in .gov or .org, those are reliable sources from an organization or the government.