Mental Health in Porn: Is Ignorance Contagious?

https://twitter.com/slutsaucekhloe/status/1547323128770174976?s=20&t=q0mCkhjFJXWsdHP-3-ZfOg

In a recently deleted tweet, a 25-year-old unenlightened and uninformed man tweeted Khloe Kapri saying that mental health problems are contagious. Mental health disorders are not contagious. But ignorant behaviors that lack good sense and judgment have always been contagious. It even has a name: social contagion.

In context, he was referencing children that Khloe doesn’t even have and then explicitly said they might catch ADHD and PTSD from her. Two aspects of this are alarming to me. First, the nature vs. nurture debate is old and outdated, but both are factually possible. However, catching mental disorders is not.

Fact: Mental health disorders have a genetic component and can be hereditary.

Fact: Mental health disorders can be developed and aggravated as a result of our socialization.

Certain psychological or emotional states like sadness and anxiety can be part of a group experience, which does not mean they are contagious. It’s possible and expected that, for example, if you play soccer and your team loses, everyone on the team feels sad. That does not mean that one person on the team has Depression Disorder and the other team members caught depression as if it were a virus.

In Psychology, we call this social contagion.

“Social contagion theory tries to understand the social influence that explains how people’s perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors are transformed primarily through interpersonal processes, and these mainly occur within social networks of the individuals.”

In other words, social contagion happens when our perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors evolve because of what we are experiencing in a group. Even Plato talked about infection with imitation.

It’s human nature to imitate. Even as babies… babies don’t smile because they’re happy. They smile because they’re imitating what you’re doing and getting rewarded with more smiles and compliments every time they do it. It’s called the mirror neuron system, and this imitation has nothing to do with the baby being infected or having caught a psychological disorder.

Source: https://underprospective.com/008

The idea that we imitate behavior has been scientifically studied since the 1890s. Several cases of this social contagion are fascinating but hard to understand from a scientific point of view. One of the best known (and my favorite) is the Dancing Mania which happened primarily in Europe between the 14^th and 17^th centuries.

“Dancing mania was a social phenomenon that… involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion… Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event and was well documented in contemporary reports. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of the dancing mania.”

Some people believe it was religious cults organizing events to distract people from the stress and poverty of the times. Other people suggest it might have happened because of fungi and mold in the crops that acted as psychedelics, making it the original Woodstock. The only thing we know is that it was a form of social influence because the actions of one person affected a group.

Fact: Humans learn from how other people behave and the consequences of that behavior.

Fact: The behaviors we learn and imitate are learned, not ‘caught’ like a virus.

The second alarming aspect of the tweet is that, for some reason, he assumes she has Attention-Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

It’s accurate to say that children can learn and imitate their parents’ behavior. It’s possible that if the parents have ADHD or PTSD, children will imitate behaviors that can be similar to behaviors associated with these disorders. For example, suppose the child’s primary caretaker is disorganized. In that case, the child will grow up thinking that’s ‘normal’ and will be disorganized until it learns new, more adaptive behaviors on its own.

Saying and implying that disorders are contagious is, to say the least, ignorant. It's not just incorrect; it creates a space where discrimination would be appropriate. It’s ok to say, ‘I don’t want to spend time with John Doe this week because he has COVID.’ COVID is contagious; therefore, spending time with John represents a risk to your health and well-being.

ADHD, PTSD, and all other mental health disorders are not contagious. John can spend his entire life surrounded by people with mental health disorders, and he will never catch any of them.

Let’s say John Doe is diagnosed with PTSD. A traumatic event triggers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Triggered. Oxford Languages defines ‘triggered’ as ‘caused by a particular action, process, or situation.’ This refers to how the symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, hopelessness, etc., start. However, inherited mental health risks like a family history of anxiety and depression cause the disorder after the trigger.

It doesn’t matter how much time you spend with John Doe; you will never ‘catch’ or develop PTSD just because he has it.

As a society, it is our duty to protect and assist people who aren’t as fortunate as we are. Publicly posting misinformation about mental health disorders is a disservice to people who suffer from these disorders and the professionals who dedicate their lives to studying and working to help them find happiness and purpose in life.

In March 2021, Cherie DeVille published an article about the mental health crisis that adult film stars endure. Like everyone else, sex workers can have genetic predispositions to health and mental health problems. She explains that she’s suffered from anxiety all her life and that, just like everyone else, sometimes family and work can make it worst.

“Porn doesn’t cause mental health disorders, but the stigma surrounding porn can exacerbate pre-existing conditions.”

Even though sex workers frequently report having depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and ADHD, there’s something else I want you to know. People who watch porn also report higher levels of depression and anxiety than the general population. And they didn’t catch it from anyone either.