Health Fashion: Why did people start thinking about mental wellness?

In the last few years, the number of people taking care of themselves has increased significantly. Moreover, this concern is not only physical as visiting a doctor or taking a vacation to a resort, but also mental.

Nowadays can be already noticed a huge number of podcasts, videos, articles, and channels dedicated to the topic of mental health’s importance. People have discovered the possibility to visit psychologists and the significance of this career has vividly increased. Thus, according to a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, “​​Gen Z is significantly more likely to report their mental health as fair or poor, with 27 percent saying this is the case. Millennials (15 percent) and Gen Xers (13 percent) have similar numbers reporting fair or poor mental health, while fewer than one in 10 Boomers (7 percent) and older adults (5 percent) consider their mental health fair or poor.”

This change towards yourself happened largely due to technological progress. Remembering the stories of parents, the whole life was fixated on work in factories. Obviously, it was a difficult time for families and there was no time left to take care of themselves. After all, according to the familiar words of older generation “only the person who is physically healthy is well”. So, over time, a huge number of professions have been formed in way allowing employees to find time for themselves, such as remote job or freelance. In this case, person have the opportunity to choose a job according to own desire. So, people began to think more about themselves. Furthermore, self-awareness and self-development awakened in many people.

"It also seems to me that people have begun to talk about it more openly also because they are increasingly allowing themselves to feel the mental distress. They become more attentive, sensitive." - explained Irina Makarova, Director of the Psychological Counseling Center, for HSE

On the other hand, people have been greatly influenced by the Internet, mobile phones and the very ability to stay in touch with each other at any time. As an example, what is happening during the pandemic caused negative consequences for people and many began to look for “self-help” in Internet. Thanks to this opportunity, users began to absorb more information and distribute it just as quickly. Especially brightly the development of it can be seen through the huge number of psychological channels authors and various trends that gaining the popularity on Tiktok, Vkontakte and other platforms.

Thus, success in the modern world depends on how free a person is inside, how emotionally stable or quickly find the help that needed and carry it out even if via the Internet. This largely influenced the growth in popularity of psychology and work with mental health.

Works cited:

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2018/stress-gen-z.pdf