Seeking happiness is a mental habit and attitude. -FILE PIC
Seeking happiness is a mental habit and attitude. -FILE PIC

LETTERS: The rise of mental illness is disconcerting and demands our attention and seriousness in handling the issue.

Malaysia has charted mental illness as a top 10 public health crisis as an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today, we live in a society that worries about how we are seen and judged by others — what psychologists call "the social evaluative threat" — which is one of the most serious burdens on the quality and experience of life in many countries.

Anybody can now be famous in the blink of an eye. The rise of popularity and fame in social media is based on likes, followers, level of attractiveness, status, viral, erotic images and videos that seek for attention.

The unhealthy amount of screen time on multiple devices has consumed our precious time while distracting and draining us from our real purpose and goals in life.

More often than not, social media has turbocharged a way of life that includes scarcity, vulnerability and materialism. Self-image is one of the crucial factors that influence human life so deeply.

We would spend an astronomical amount of money for a status symbol, beauty and cosmetic, client impression, physical attraction and publicity.

The social media game of "keeping up with the Joneses" is the root of all evil that constantly makes human lives miserable. We often make mistakes when we seek it in conformity, in the approval of others, or in material things.

How we spend our money has become a more important indicator of social class than how we earn it and that is a cause of great social anxiety, as well as financial hardship.

In 1899, American sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term "conspicuous consumption", which describes the phenomenon of buying luxury goods to publicly display one's wealth to attain status.

Research shows that the prevalent scarcity culture is associated with the mental health crisis amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which has implicated human lives in multitude degrees, including depression, social isolation, anxiety, vulnerability and other health problems.

In Malaysia, the recent 2015 epidemiological data reported by the Health Ministry identified that mental health problems among adults have grown three-fold over a decade.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the figure from this predicament could skyrocket to an unprecedented level.

The coalescence of a skewed worldview on social media, mental health and the Covid-19 pandemic has created an impending doom in human lives that consequently leads to hopelessness and a bleak future.

In the midst of it all, seeking happiness is a mental habit and attitude, which is not learned and practised - it is purely internal, according to Dr Matthew N. Chappell in his book Worry and Its Control.

To make things better, we should avoid comparisons with what is portrayed on social media.

A simple plan for a break every day to take your mind off all the "noise" out there is necessary and whenever you feel tension mounting or feel hurried or harried, retire to your quiet room for a few moments.

When you are too concerned over what other people think, when you become too careful in consciously trying to please others, when you are too sensitive to real or fancied disapproval of other people, then you will have excessive negative thoughts, inhibitions and poor performance.

Many people acquire the outward symbols of success, but when they go to open the long-sought-after treasure chest, they find it empty. Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.

Last but not least, life is a series of problems. Try to not succumb to the already sombre situation we are in. Try to "re-live" and plan your life gradually.

Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself some sort of project. Decide what you want out of a situation. Always have something ahead to "look forward to", to work and hope for.

DR SHEIKH ALI AZZRAN SH SAID

Senior lecturer, Centre of Studies for Construction, Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying,

Universiti Teknologi Mara


The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times