By community correspondent Isabelle Kabban

Bipolar, insomnia, depression. Mental illnesses that cause distress or disability and can ruin some people’s lives. So I ask myself, why has it suddenly become ‘trendy’ to have these illnesses? There are a growing number of teenagers who seem to want to live the lifestyles of the characters from ‘Skins’, a teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol and shows their lives filled with drug taking, alcohol abuse and depression. People are going to such extents as openly talking about their so-called insomnia, how ‘difficult’ their lives are and how many times they have been kicked out of the house. It is obvious to everyone, who actually has problems and who is being a compulsive liar in order to sound slightly more like ’Effy’ the main character in Skins who in previous episodes slit her wrists and suddenly became psychotic out of the blue…

Another issue is that celebrities are all open with the press about their mental health. Obviously people my age read magazines and realise that celebrities such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and many, many more all suffer from depression. So really, is depression, insomnia and bipolar everywhere in the media? It seems like it when popular shows for teenagers such as 90210, Eastenders and Skins all have had a story line based around one of their main characters having bipolar or psychosis.

I asked Emilia Levett, 15 from New Malden her opinion on people her age portraying themselves as having mental illnesses: “I think it’s upsetting that people are almost wanting to have these illnesses which hurt so many people. They obviously don’t know the real effects of them and if they actually had these problems they would regret ever pretending to have them. Obviously not everyone pretends to have them because sadly they are becoming more common but I think it’s disgusting that someone would ever want an illness for an image of being like someone in a TV show…”

Unfortunately about 10% of girls aged 10- 15 in the UK suffer from depression and I understand that sadly many people are not pretending to have these illnesses and will have to overcome symptoms including feeling hopeless most of the time, having difficulty doing most small tasks, feeling anxious, not being able to think clearly and feeling guilt. I hope people will soon realise that they are lucky to not have these problems and will understand how hard it is to have a mental illness.