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autumn-foxfire · 3 years

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What Im thinking about today: BNHA n stigmatization of psychology.

The thing is, we as humans are very ready to help each other (most of the time). Thats why we try to rehabilitate prisoners, thats why we volunteer, thats why proffesions such as doctors, social workers and psychologists etc exist. I think we talked here before how most villains in the series havent been failed by heroes, they've been failed by societal safety nets that were meant to catch ppl like them, just like social workers try to catch endangered kids and psychologists try to catch people with mental problems.

Now i study psychology so ill concentrate on that. Obviously it depends from place to place but mental care is still very often looked down upon as 'something for crazy people.' I have personal expirience with that as when i suggested to my dad that maybe he should look into a psychologist too (after my brother started going to one) cuz he has some issues that he could use a hand dealing with, his response was 'what? But im not crazy'. I study psychology and he still often makes jokes about me treating crazy people in the future. I interviewd a school psychologist for a class and she told us that one of the first things she has to do in a school is get students to relax and feel comfortable coming to her with problems cuz there is a very clear stigma in everyones mind that asking for help with your mental problems is something bad, something wrong, something that means you are crazy, wierd, other and people do fear that stigmatization. Going to a psychologist doesnt mean you are crazy, it means you are having problems that you cant deal with on your own and that you need proffesional help with. Nothing more, nothing less. Those problems can be depression or they can be helping you to deal with lingering emotions from your divorce. Big or small, psychology is simply there to give you support and tools you need to feel good again. You wouldnt stigmatize someone for going to the doctor for a soar throat or cancer so you shouldnt stigmatize someone seeking p much the same help for mental illness.

But people still do because things ingrained in society are very very hard to uproot and things are going for the better with every generation but its a painfully slow process and there is no telling how many people fall through that net because they dont seek help when they still can because they think 'im not crazy im not gonna go to those mumbo junbo psychologist that mess with your head' which is very much like going 'im not gonna go to a doctor for my infected wound, they would mess with my body'. Untreated infections spread and get worse and people fall through.

This is what leads me back to bnha. We dont know exactly how long the world of quirks existed, i think i saw a post breaking it down to be for about 100-300 years but for the life of me i cant remember. We know its not terribly long. 100 years may seem long until you remember a single human can live to 100 years old. Now my question is, if a science such as psychology that has been present since like ancient greeks n egypt n stuff can still be stigmatized.

How accepted would quirk counseling be?

Lets not forget that quirks were heavily discriminated against in the begining, treated as monsterous and the other and the acceptence of them is still something fresh and more extreme mutations still face hate groups. Like its completly canon that there are people alive now in bnha whos parents or grandparents faced discrimination or died because of quirk discrimination (cough redestro cough).

Imagine being Togas parents.

Your child displays a quirk like that. You still have in memory your parent or grandparent who was discriminated and monsterized because of a similar quirk. Quirk counceling exists but why should you take your daughter there. Shes not a monster, this isnt something you should get someone else involved with, its a family matter and what do those counselors know anyway, they will treat your daughter as a monster and make everything worse. You can handle this yourself, you can teach her to supress it. Shes not a monster.

The wound festers.

This especially goes hard for japan whos big on the keeping things in the family aspect and not discracing the family. The stigma is still fresh in the memory and you dont want to be that family whos kid goes to quirk counseling. You shut the doors, you shut the windows, you deal with it within the family.

I think that while quirk counseling exists in bnha, it would most likely be seen as something thats shameful to atend, a admitance that you dont have control over your own quirk. Your friends might say 'what the fuck man why are you going there, you arent a monster' even if a quirk that has negative effects should be treated as shortsighted eyes that need glasses. Just because it doesnt function well, doesnt mean its bad. But well stigmatization of disabled is a whole nother thing our society also has problems with and that also connects to bnha (cough aoyama cough). I think thats why its so easy for people in bnha to fall through those safety nets. I do belive they exist but they are new, probably not the most super effective as most new things tend to be and are probably looked down upon.

And hate to break it to shiggy and the crew but thats the kind of a problem that can only be fixed my longterm education and normalization of asking for help rather then burning the systhem to the ground.

I hope that made sense i always get a little loopy with my points when i write a long one fgdgff

No, it makes sense.

Mental health is still stigmatized everywhere, even here in the UK where we’re supposed to have some of the best health care available (which is debatable). To bring something a little personal into this, my flatmates and I were playing a guessing game where I had to describe a word with other descriptions being taboo (in my case it was headache) and as my flatmates know I suffer from chronic headaches, I said as a clue that it was something I get often. Well, a flatmate who was a little tipsy at the time who knows about my depression shouted depression to my other shocked flatmates (I didn’t mind, in fact I found it hilarious). But after we had all calmed down, one of my flatmates said something that stuck with me: “Maybe you shouldn’t overshare things”.

Now, I don’t see telling people I have depression as something I’m oversharing. It’s not private, it’s a mental health condition I suffer from that can kill me if it goes unchecked (before starting medication again, I was very suicidal). In fact, it benefits both me and my flatmates to know that I have depression just in case. And yet it was viewed as something that I was “oversharing”.

This attitude has only arisen because people treat mental health as something that is shameful and should only be known among family members. In fact, I had no clue that DASS (a disability service in uni) was actually also for mental health issues because we’ve been raised with people treating mental health as something “in our heads” and so isn’t as important as physical disabilities, it was only until my uni pointed out that it was there for every condition, physical and mental.

The point I’m making is that I can totally see mental health in BNHA be treated as a shameful secret. Japan doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to mental health anyway (don’t they have some of the highest suicide rates?) so it wouldn’t surprise me if the BNHA universe is the same. In fact, the only mental health issues we’ve seen in BNHA currently are the extreme examples of it such as Twice and Dabi’s mania.

I would love to see Horikoshi delve a little more into quirk counselling and the potential stigma behind it. I know it’s been brought up once or twice (UA treats it as something normal but as teachers who see mental health issues all the time, it’s no wonder that they do) but not enough in my opinion when it’s probably one of the most important stop gaps between making villains.

I don’t have much hope, admittedly, but it would be something fun to explore in fanon too!

#bnha #bnha manga spoilers #mental health #mental health discussion #personal #thanks for the ask!!#thegaygyrus

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