Is the Colloquialisation of Mental Health Terms Diluting Their Meaning?
24/04/25Welcome back to the third, and final, blog of the series – Labelling Mental Illness amongst Adolescents in the 21st Century: A Double-Edged Sword.
Conversations about mental health are more open than ever before - a shift that is widely seen as positive. Terms including “mental wellbeing,” “anxiety,” and “ADHD” have surged exponentially in usage over the past century, reflecting growing awareness and a reduction in stigma¹. As a result, people feel more comfortable expressing their emotions and seeking support. However, alongside this progress, there’s also been a rise in the overuse, misapplication, and even glamorisation of mental health terminology.
Words like anxious, depressed, OCD, and ADHD have become common in everyday conversation, often blurring the line between clinical conditions and ordinary emotions. Someone might say, “my anxiety is so intense right now” before an exam when they’re simply feeling natural nerves, or joke about being “a bit OCD” because they like their kitchen tidy. But are these harmless exaggerations, or is there a deeper issue at hand?
Beyond awareness, social media has accelerated this shift, often oversimplifying mental health information and fuelling self-diagnosis trends. Posts listing vague symptoms can lead people to misinterpret normal emotional responses as signs of a disorder².
This makes it easier for people to label themselves with conditions they may not have. This blog aims to tackle some of the important questions raised: while everyone deserves to understand and validate their emotions, what happens when clinical diagnoses are diluted in the process? How does this collective misuse of diagnostic terms shape our understanding of mental illness and influence how people perceive their own mental health?
A description or diagnosis?
The word anxiety has adopted an adjectival meaning, often used interchangeably with stress and nervous. However, these emotions serve very different purposes. Stress is a natural and necessary response to external pressures. In challenging situations, the body enters a fight-or-flight state, releasing hormones like adrenaline and cortisol to help us respond. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a clinical condition that disrupts daily life and can arise without an immediate cause³.
Phrases like “It’s just my anxiety” or “I had another panic attack” are often thrown around casually to describe fleeting nerves before a first date or after making a mistake at work or school. However, this blurs the distinction between a normal emotional response and a diagnosable disorder.
But does it really matter if these words are used loosely?
In reality, the casual misuse of clinical terms contributes to a growing misunderstanding of mental illness. It makes it harder to recognise genuine anxiety disorders in ourselves and others⁴. The same is true for depression. If "depression" is used to describe temporary sadness, those with clinically diagnosed depression may struggle to convey the severity of their experience. When these words lose their precision, they also lose their impact.
The Expanding Meaning of Mental Illness
Haslam’s theory of Concept Creep (2016) describes how psychological terms have gradually expanded to include a broader range of experiences and varying levels of severity⁵. This occurs in two key ways: horizontal creep, where mental health terms now apply to a wider set of psychological phenomena, and vertical creep where less severe cases are increasingly classified under the same diagnostic umbrella as more extreme cases.
While expanding our understanding of mental health can be beneficial, the expanding use of these terms risks diluting their meaning and trivialising the experiences of those severely affected by the conditions.
This broadening of definitions has also extended to behaviours traditionally seen as bad or disruptive, such as aggression, rudeness or defiance. For example, a child who frequently refuses instructions might be diagnosed with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). However, this isn't just stubbornness. PDA is rooted in extreme anxiety, meaning these children require a different approach to those simply acting out. The challenge lies in distinguishing between behaviour driven by a genuine condition and what falls within the spectrum of normal child development.
As a result, more conservative or right-leaning individuals often resist the horizontal expansion of concept creep, viewing it as an overreach that excuses poor behaviour rather than addressing it through discipline or personal responsibility⁵. This debate highlights the fine line between raising awareness of diagnosable conditions and the frustration that arises when labels are perceived as excuses for poor behaviour.
Misperception
Colloquialising mental health terms not only oversimplifies complex conditions but can also be deeply frustrating for those with a diagnosis. Take the phrase “I’m so OCD,” which is often used to describe tidiness, meticulous cleaning, or double-checking appliances. What's the harm in this statement?
Firstly, these behaviours alone do not indicate OCD. While they may resemble stereotypes associated with the disorder, OCD is a severe and often debilitating condition. It is marked by intrusive, obsessive thoughts and compulsions that feel impossible to resist⁶.
Symptoms vary widely, which is why different subtypes exist, including contamination, checking, ordering, and hoarding OCD. The most common, contamination-OCD, is characterised by obsessive fears of germs or illness, leading to compulsive cleaning behaviours⁷. Unlike someone who enjoys an organised space and chooses to clean, a person with OCD often despises their compulsions but may feel powerless against them⁸.
For example, someone with checking-OCD may feel compelled to check that the front door is locked 30 times before leaving the house. Even if they know logically that the door is locked, they cannot shake the overwhelming anxiety that something bad will happen if they don’t check again. This compulsion can consume hours of their day and cause immense distress. Given this reality, it’s easy to see why a throwaway remark like "I’m so OCD" can feel invalidating to someone whose life is significantly affected by the condition.
Secondly, this statement arguably doesn’t make sense grammatically. You wouldn’t say, "I'm so obsessive compulsive disorder", or, “my kitchen is a bit obsessive compulsive disorder”. These statements reinforce stereotypes that reduce OCD to a trivial personality quirk rather than the serious, often life-altering condition that it is.
Ironically, the more mental health terms are misused, the more they contribute to stigma. They dismiss mental illness and reinforce the misconception that it’s something people can simply snap out of. Many of us have likely made comments like these without considering their impact. But with greater awareness comes the responsibility to be more mindful of our language.
The Role of Social Media
Social media has helped raise awareness of mental health, creating spaces where people can share their experiences and seek support. It has encouraged people to reflect on their emotions and recognise when professional help might be beneficial. However, the accessibility of unregulated mental health information online also enables the spread of misinformation, adding to the issues of self-diagnosis, misperceptions, and colloquialisation.
A recent study found that only 9% of mental health influencers have relevant qualifications, while a staggering 83.7% of mental health advice on TikTok is misleading⁹. This means that the vast majority of mental health content is coming from unverified sources, often simplifying complex disorders into short, relatable soundbites.
For example, a post might claim, “If you don’t like loud noises, you might be autistic.” While sensitivity to sound can be associated with autism, this kind of oversimplification overlooks the complexity of neurodiversity. It promotes self-diagnosis based on a single trait, rather than encouraging a deeper understanding of the condition as a whole. Teenagers at the Cambridge Mind Technologies Summer Research Programme expressed concern about how social media can make users feel as though something is wrong with them. This trend can also feel frustrating, or even invalidating, for those whose experience of autism significantly affects their daily lives.
Social media itself is not the problem. The real threat is the lack of regulation and our tendency to trust whatever appears on our feeds. When mental illness is reduced to catchy, shareable content, it distorts public understanding and risks misleading people who are looking for real answers.
This is where Cami makes a difference. Rather than allowing social media to amplify distress or misinformation, Cami focuses on addressing emotions in the moment - not encouraging sweeping generalisations or catastrophising normal experiences. This can help ground teenagers, helping them focus on the here and now to address the matter at hand.
What are your thoughts on this? Have labels helped or hurt your experience with mental health? Please feel free to email hello@cambridgemindtechnologies.com with any opinions you have on this topic, we’d love to hear from you!
References
Google. (n.d.). Google Books Ngram Viewer. Retrieved April 8, 2025, from https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mental+wellbeing&year_start=1922&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
Williamson, C., (2025, March 17). Freya India - Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever (No. 916) [Audio podcast episode], In Modern Wisdom. https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/916-freya-india-why-modern-women-feel-more-lost-than-ever/id1347973549?i=1000699453801
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). (2024, October 22). NHS. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/generalised-anxiety-disorder-gad/
Marone, L. (2024, July 16). Are We Overusing the Term “Anxiety”? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/gaining-and-sustaining/202407/are-we-overusing-the-term-anxiety
Haslam, N. (2016). Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology. Psychological Inquiry, 27(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418
Overview - Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). (2023, April 4). NHS. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/overview/
Markarian, Y., Larson, M. J., Aldea, M. A., Baldwin, S. A., Good, D., Berkeljon, A., Murphy, T. K., Storch, E. A., & McKay, D. (2010). Multiple pathways to functional impairment in obsessive–compulsive disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(1), 78–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.09.005
Mills, K., (2023, October). OCD myths and realities, with Dean McKay, PhD, and Uma Chatterjee (No. 260) [Audio podcast episode]. In Speaking of Psychology. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/obsessive-compulsive-disorder
Plushcare Content Team. (2025, January 8). How Accurate is Mental Health Advice on TikTok? Plushcare. https://plushcare.com/blog/tiktok-mental-health/
Author: Emma Crane, Cambridge Mind Technologies Volunteer
Emma is an assistant therapist at an SEN school in Surrey. She has a First Class degree in Psychology from the University of Bristol, and she is passionate about applying her knowledge to support children with learning disabilities and social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) difficulties. Her work in therapy has deepened her knowledge in this field and made her more committed to supporting young people struggling with their mental health. Alongside her role, she volunteers for Cambridge Mind Technologies, contributing to the blog by exploring the challenges adolescents with mental health difficulties face in today’s world. Her goal is to share insights on how tools like Cambridge Mind Technologies can empower and support young people in navigating these challenges.
