I wanted to let the dust settle regarding the online reaction to Sinéad O’ Connor’s ongoing battle with her mental health, but felt compelled to write. Much has been made of this online reaction due to the fact that a small minority decided to use the distressing situation of Sinéad reportedly going missing in Chicago to incite humour and mockery, which although extremely disappointing was to be expected. The darker side of the online world is that we generally don’t have to wait long till some trolls decide to make a joke out of people’s personal struggles, which is then followed by a tsunami of domino effect like reactions.
On one hand I feel there is a belief system amongst people such as these that if you are in the public eye for any particular reason it is acceptable to mock or sneer at them rather than see them as someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, sister or brother. I suppose this type of behaviour has been around for forever but has been accelerated by the arrival of social media and the internet and the anonymity both offer. Either way, it’s sickening, toxic and simply only highlights these individuals inability to illustrate empathy.
However, let’s not concentrate on those tiny minorities that use these situations to find shallow humour in a deeply upsetting case. On social media just 24 hours after news agencies published that Sinéad had gone missing there were well over 100,000 tweets on Twitter regarding the situation.
Against my better judgement I decided to read some of the posts and although there were a few incredibly ignorant tweets, the vast majority of reactions were exploding with empathy and support. Those that had made jokes of the situation were collectively denounced and ripped apart by the majority.
Yet today, much of the public discussion is around the negative response on social media thus magnifying the minority rather than highlighting the huge response of empathy and even relative understanding of the situation.
It’s certainly important to offer balance in this case but the reality is some of the statements and comments that were made could become deflating to those who read them such as “we haven’t progressed at all as a society” or “mental health is still as much a stigma now as it was 40 years ago”.
Surely we can all see how truly misrepresentative this is. To say we are not progressing is simply not the case and to let these ignorant posts even question that is not a balanced response.
We have to also understand that real life doesn’t revolve around Twitter and social media alone. To use that as the only gauge as public opinion is lazy and not an accurate definition of our society.
The negative reaction of the minority may in some ways hinder some people’s decision to look for help but the magnifying of this ignorance will simply make this worse. We could try countering that by looking at the staggering amount of kindness and empathy, supporting and understanding that does actually exist. It is beautiful to witness, it offers hope and must be promoted.
We are progressing, we are slowly eroding the stigma surrounding mental health and if we stay cohesive and collective as a society in response to this, the stigma will continue to erode. I fear in many cases the complexities of these situations such as Sinéad’s struggle is hard to comprehend for many, but perhaps you don’t need to understand, perhaps you just need to show empathy and care, and attempt to do one thing yourself to take a brick out of the wall-like stigma surrounding mental health.
Support Our Campaign
We rely on the generosity of the public to fund our work and so far together we have achieved great things! Please do continue to support us so we can provide future generations in Ireland with the resources to recognise and talk about their emotions, and equip them to navigate the ever-changing world around them as they grow
