Is mental illness contagious? New study says yes

When Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, came out, the usual cohort of left-wing progressives condemned her views and challenged her statements, even those based on clear research findings. One of her most contentious allegations was that the trans craze is a form of social contagion — that girls in particular are vulnerable to peer pressure that encourages them to blame all their emotional distress on “gender dysphoria.”

What many do not realize is that social contagion as an explanation for an explosive rise in mental health diagnoses is widely accepted among psychologists and researchers. It is only in this one specific area of transgenderism that the idea is considered controversial.

Now, a new study has come out providing more support for the social contagion theory.

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I get down with a little help from my friend

The new study, published in JAMA Psychiatry (the Journal of the American Medical Association), followed over 700,000 people in Finland for over a decade, from the age of 16 upward, and found that what the researchers refer to as “mental disorders” appear to be contagious within adolescent peer networks.

In this cohort study including more than 700,000 individuals in Finland, analysis of nationwide, interlinked registry data found that having classmates diagnosed with a mental disorder in the ninth grade ... was associated with increased risk of receiving a mental disorder diagnosis later in life.

Increased risk remained after adjusting for an array of parental, school-level, and area-level confounders.

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Domino disorder

The individuals studied were tracked from when they completed ninth grade either until they were diagnosed with a mental disorder (or emigrated or died) or until the end of 2019, whichever came first. The mental disorders investigated were: substance misuse disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and behavioral and emotional disorders.

Researchers found that the likelihood of an individual being diagnosed with a mood, anxiety, or eating disorder rose significantly once at least one other classmate had received a diagnosis:

Diagnosis-specific analyses revealed positive associations for mood, anxiety, and eating disorders even with only 1 diagnosed classmate.

For behavioral and emotional disorders, however, the effect of social contagion was only seen when more than one classmate had been diagnosed.

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All in all, of the 713,809 adolescents followed, 47,433 had been diagnosed with a mental disorder diagnosis by the ninth grade, 6.6 percent of the total.

Of the remaining 666,376 adolescents, 167,227 of them, or 25.1 percent, received a mental disorder diagnosis during the follow-up period.

The researchers found that the risk of social contagion was highest during the first year of follow-up, with a 9-percent increase where 1 classmate had received a diagnosis and an 18-percent increase if more than 1 classmate had been diagnosed.

They concluded that:

The findings of this study suggest that mental disorders might be transmitted within adolescent peer networks. More research is required to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the possible transmission of mental disorders.

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Less stigma, more disease?

Although the researchers called for more investigation into the reasons why mental disorders might be contagious, they did posit several possible explanations for their findings. For instance, they suggested that the stigma that is attached to mental illness might be lessened once a classmate receives a diagnosis, making it more likely that others who were also suffering will open up:

One plausible mechanism is the normalization of mental disorders through increased awareness and receptivity to diagnosis and treatment when having individuals with diagnosis in the same peer network.

Similarly, having individuals with no diagnosis in the peer network might discourage seeking help for any underlying mental health problems.

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It's cool to be sick

They also suggested that some mental disorders, such as anorexia, were socially fashionable:

For some diagnosis categories, such as eating disorders, transmission could also occur through processes of peer social influence to which adolescents are particularly susceptible.

And they put forward the idea that depressed people could make those around them depressed as well:

Another possible mechanism facilitating the transmission of certain mental disorders, such as depression, pertains to direct interpersonal contagion. For instance, it is conceivable that long-term exposure to a depressive individual could lead to gradual development of depressive symptoms through the well-established neural mechanisms of emotional contagion.

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More proof for an old theory

The study’s authors did not claim that their findings were revolutionary in any way — in fact, they stressed that the data confirmed many previous studies that have shown “clustering of mood and/or anxiety symptoms” in social settings:

To our knowledge, the present study is the largest and most comprehensive investigation on this topic to date. Our findings are consistent with previous studies reporting clustering of mood and/or anxiety symptoms in social networks of adolescents and adults, as well as with evidence suggesting similar social transmission of eating disorders. 

For example, a longitudinal survey study with a school-based design showed that exposure to peers with depressive symptoms in the same school grade was associated with more depressive symptoms in a sample of 8290 adolescents.

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Who's faking?

Professor Christian Hakulinen of the University of Helsinki interpreted the study’s findings in a positive light, saying that encouraging young people to be more forthcoming in asking for assistance for their issues was likely to prove helpful:

It may be possible, for instance, that the threshold for seeking help for mental health issues is lowered when there are one or more people in your social network who have already sought help for their problems. In fact, this kind of normalization of diagnosis and treatment can be considered beneficial contagion of mental disorders.

Others are less upbeat about the study’s implications, including one teacher interviewed by Yahoo News, who pointed out that being “mentally ill” has long ceased to be a stigma and can in fact work in the opposite direction, as adolescents use “illness” to boost their social credentials:

Having the same mental illness or problem in school has become a way for teenagers to fit in. Where issues relating to self-harm and anxiety would have been kept hidden by previous generations, I’ve noticed an upturn in children almost jumping on a bandwagon and using a diagnosis to find or keep their friends, and occasionally like a badge of honor.

She added that this could make it harder to distinguish between those students who are genuinely suffering and those who are faking it, whether consciously or otherwise:

It makes identifying those who are genuinely struggling difficult, but we have to treat every case seriously of course. They’re getting so many different messages from all over, while trying desperately to carve out their own identity. Although emulating mental health issues does have roots in reduced stigma and improved identification, it’s becoming a problem that not all cases are genuine, and that’s hard for teaching staff to navigate without more specialist input.

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Maybe the fakers are the sickest of all?

What this teacher did not mention was that if a student is so desperate for acceptance that he or she will fake emotional distress or even become genuinely unwell in order to obtain it, that too is a "genuine case," though perhaps a different diagnosis is in order.

As one professional who declined to be named put it,

A society in which being mentally ill places a person on a pedestal is a very sick society indeed. Perhaps, instead of glorifying illness, we should be focused on curing it.

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The information contained in this article is for educational and information purposes only and is not intended as health, medical, financial or legal advice. Always consult a physician, lawyer or other qualified professional regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition, health objectives or legal or financial issues. ‍If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call a qualified free mental health helpline or seek help from a qualified therapist.