Americans are more focused on mental health today than at any other point in our history. Public health campaigns urge us to check in on our feelings and talk openly about our struggles. Schools have adopted mental health curriculums. Employers offer mental health days. There are thousands of mental health and wellness apps.
Yet our mental health appears to be getting worse. Over the past several decades, the percentage of Americans who report being in poor mental health has been rising. Over half of U.S. doctors surveyed in 2023 reported a decline in their patients’ mental health. That same year, more than three-quarters of companies reported rising mental health concerns among their work forces.
Could our preoccupation with mental health be part of the problem?
In some ways, encouraging people to think and talk more about their mental health is a good thing. There is now less stigma around mental illness, and more people who can benefit from professional help are getting it. But there is also reason to believe that efforts to bring attention to mental health struggles are inadvertently making us more vulnerable to psychological distress.
Start with our expanding conception of mental illness. The more fixated we are on mental health, the more sensitive we become to anything that might qualify as a symptom and the more we use clinical language to describe normal emotional experiences like grief, burnout and loneliness. This broadening of what we think counts as a disorder — known as concept creep — encourages us to pathologize ordinary life and see ourselves as mentally unhealthy.
Then there’s our perception of how widespread mental illness is. By broadening what counts as a disorder, we begin to see it everywhere, including in ourselves. Research has found that when people view social media posts that normalize anxiety disorders, they become more inclined to think they have one.
Nearly a third of American adults and half of Gen Z adults have given themselves a diagnosis of a mental illness based on information from social media. And research suggests that people who rely on social media for information about mental illnesses tend to have less accurate knowledge about them.
But the problem isn’t just that many people give themselves incorrect diagnoses. It’s also that these misperceptions can put people on the path to developing poor mental health — a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. When people in one study were encouraged to adopt a broad view of what constitutes trauma, they reported greater levels of distress after watching a film clip with disturbing content and were more likely to describe the experience as personally traumatic.
Or consider anxiety. A certain amount is useful; it helps keep us alert and motivated to reach our goals. But start viewing anxiety as a disorder and you can become hypervigilant about avoiding anxiety-provoking situations — which, in turn, can increase the risk of developing an actual anxiety disorder.
None of this means we should abandon concern for mental health. It means we need a different approach, one that supports psychological well-being without fixating on it. Fortunately, some of the most effective strategies for taking care of our mental health help get us out of our heads.
Start with exercise. A growing body of research indicates that exercise does as good a job at reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression as psychotherapy or medication, and in some cases better. And exercise supports good mental health for everyone — those with and without mental health diagnoses.
Activities such as volunteering and performing acts of kindness for others are also powerful ways to support mental health. One study randomly assigned individuals with anxiety and depression symptoms either to practice a set of cognitive-behavioral therapeutic exercises or to engage in acts of kindness toward others. Both approaches reduced anxiety and depression, but the kindness group improved more, suggesting that focusing on someone else’s problems took people’s minds off their own worries.
Which brings us to life’s meaning. The more meaningful that people find their lives, the more resilient they are when facing stress and the less at risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide.
Finding meaning is often characterized as a contemplative exercise, something arrived at through deep deliberation. But while our ability to turn inward and ponder existential questions makes humans unique in our quest for meaning, finding meaning tends to involve outward-oriented action. That’s because we feel the most meaningful when we are doing things that provide social significance — a sense that we matter, that we play an important role in other people’s lives.
We should be thankful for the progress we’ve made on mental health and continue to improve access to effective treatment. But we should also try to spend less time stuck in our heads and more time out in the world, pursuing the kinds of activities that support mental health without making us so obsessed with it.
Clay Routledge is the executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Archbridge Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, and the director of its Human Flourishing Lab.
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