Working with kids, I've seen it all from mild to severe cases of untreated mental illness/trauma to kids faking so they can get any type of attention (a lot don't care if it's negative or positive). Tho even if the kid isn't really suicidal/depressed/etc, if they are crying out for help there may be another issue that they are trying to bring attention to but lack the resources, vocabulary and support to do so. This behavior is usually a symptom of a problem. I imagine some adults likely do this too. There's a problem but they don't know how to navigate it and cope so they behave a particular way.

Sometimes mental illness manifests differently for everyone and some folks are totally comfortable being forward with their struggles, triumphs, healing process, etc so I don't really think someone that talks about it often, makes posts about it, etc is faking it, being dramatic or just wants attention. Some people are quiet and private but some aren't. Everyone's journey with mental illness is different.


Also I don't see a problem with starting a convo with strangers regarding mental illness. Sometimes posting online and chatting with folks you'll never come face to face with is more comfortable than telling your best friends, in person, what is rattling around in your brain. Sometimes talking about it through text can be way easier. There's tons of anonymous services that folks use because they rather no one they know find out.

We’ll carry on

While I get where you’re coming from, I’d also like to say:

I’m transgender and, before I even felt comfortable admitting it to myself, I had a huge depression and was borderline eating disorder.
Not a lot of people knew about it and, when they did, I preferred not to talk about it. I had a friend who was also depressed and we only told each other the high lights.

When there moments I was quiet and withdrawn, people would ask what was wrong. I coped by pretending I was happy and everything was alright, but from time to time I couldn’t pretend.
When I’d say I was feeling depressed (what basically meant more depressed than usual), some people would say I had no idea what I was talking about. I would be feeling down, not depressed.
Those reactions made me close up even more to the outside world.
If I would talk about it, it was online and/or to people I didn’t know in real life, since they were less likely to tell me “you’re not because you’re always happy.”

What I mean to say is, just because someone looks like they’re fine, doesn’t mean they actually are. You can never know what is actually going on in someone’s head until they tell you, and, even then, you might not know everything.

Honestly, i agree that theres a limit to how much you can draw attention to your own issues before it becomes just attention for the sake of attention. I personally am not very outspoken about my issues so i have been in your position more than once.

I guess it depends on the kind of people you tend to see in your circles or something; I follow a few people, one of which has a chronic illness (Mitochondrial disease) and they sometimes talk about how it affects their life. I sometimes complain about my Aspergers/autism because I have a lot of issues with what I call The System. I'm super bitter about it and could probably write several pages worth of the stuff I've put up with and am sort of envious that some people have never had to deal with.

Personally I'm the type that tries to deal with problems on my own, however I'm happy to see mental illness being brought up in casual conversation these days. It really helps to normalize it and bring attention to the fact that it's actually pretty common. For so long admitting you had any kind of problem was pretty taboo which led to lots of misinformation and stereotyping, as well as just plain preventing advancement of the mental health field as a whole.

While the new spread of information does occasionally cause some people to incorrectly self-diagnose, it also helps those actually suffering from a disorder to recognize it and seek the help they need.

Now if only the health industry would start actually trying to help people instead of trying to bleed them dry. =|

@Sigma:
My empathy is at all time low tbh