What’s Going On With Mental Health Content on TikTok?

TikTok has been around for a little while now, and kept its spot as one of the most popular social media platforms for Gen Zers. Nowadays, however, an unlikely niche is finding soaring popularity on the platform. Mental Health. 

Image credits/ RF._.studio/Pexels

There is a new explosion of content centered around mental health, from amateur creators as well as licensed and unlicensed professionals. Gurus are flocking to the platform to offer answers and advice, and Gen-Z too, looking for them. The hashtag #MentalHealth has 42.6 billion views on the platform at the time of writing this story and the number of accounts with the words, mental health, in their name is an unending list. For context, the popular hashtag #TGIF has only 1.9 billion views, #dancechallenge has 36 billion views, and #dance, TikTok’s oldest niche, has 443.4 billion views, mental health sits right at the top as one of the most popular niches on TikTok.

It is somewhat unusual for a social media app to gain a reputation as a panacea for mental health issues, but this is exactly what TikTok is doing and, for better or worse, the conversation around mental health is changing. However, for content to make it on TikTok, it has to contain a certain viral quality. It must speak to people, and with immediacy. Be relatable, and often validating. For this reason, mental health content may need to be presented a certain way. We spoke with Joy*, 21, a TikTok user and creator whose content recently went viral on the platform. She said, “There’s this thing on social media, not just TikTok, but mostly TikTok that romanticizes mental illness. The awareness is awesome, you know. People that actually have these disorders, and I emphasize actually, feel less alone, feel heard, and are more educated in a way about their mental health.”

However, despite these benefits, Joy* shared serious concerns about the mental health conversation on TikTok. “The thing is I feel there are elements of these mental health issues in a neurotypical, healthy person’s everyday life. I mean, let’s say, anxiety. People worry from time to time. Depression. People feel sad from time to time. OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). People like things to be arranged a certain way. But this does not mean they have those disorders, but the videos that ‘educate’ the general populace have viewers that now claim to have these disorders.”

Joy spoke about her own struggles with anxiety. “I had anxiety, especially in 2020. That’s why I had to see a therapist. I had a lot of panic attacks. I know how that felt. I’d sleep and wake up with palpitations. I know how it felt to confront the lack of conscious control over my mind and my reactions. The vicious cycle of dreading panic attacks and how they affect my cardiovascular health made me have more panic attacks which made me dread them more. I had to learn breathing techniques and a lot of other things just to cope. And then, I see someone who’s simply worried about a particular thing and the person is claiming they have anxiety, or others claiming OCD or depression when they don’t have them because they think it’s cute or want to feel special. It’s very annoying, and a lot of people are like that.”

‘‘These fetishized mental illnesses come and go like fads on TikTok,’’ Joy* said. “Initially it was OCD. Now, it's ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). People just claim anything. I feel, apart from clout, people are using these mental illnesses to escape any responsibility or accountability for their behavior, to the point where many toxic traits are excused under ‘self-diagnosed’ mental illness.”

Joy* found it difficult to completely condemn the mental health movement on TikTok, despite these shortcomings. “It’s good that they’re educating the general populace, that people know now that others are going through these things and that these things exist. I just wish there weren’t people taking it out of this context. They hurt the movement more, making people not take true sufferers seriously.”

Another concern for the movement of the mental health conversation on TikTok is the app itself. Being owned by a Chinese company means being subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party. The Party's control over even China's most independent economic entities was recently evidenced by the strange disappearance of Jack Ma and the fate of Alibaba. Basically, no one knows when the Communist Party may see a political advantage and decide to weigh in, or more insidiously, if they have already.

Image credits/ Luis Dalvan/ Pexels

A lot of mental health content on TikTok is geared toward awareness, with many creators showcasing what mental illnesses like depression look like. As expected, many of these creators claim to speak from personal experience. A big part of connection on social media is identity. People connect to and follow those with whom they identify. This leads to a lot of content being curated as a list of traits that seemingly point to a person having a certain mental illness. These videos amass a lot of likes and comments, and are heavily shared by people who have the same experiences. 

On the one hand, awareness of possible illness is always a good thing, and many traits are pointers to certain illnesses, especially in combination with each other. Awareness leads to humanizing, which is, again, a good thing. AIDS is still in the process of going from being the bogeyman from hell killing society’s morally dubious, to being a viral illness that affects people due to inadequate safety measures. AIDS is no longer people, but a disease affecting people. And the people are otherwise normal, everyday people. However, unlike most physical illnesses, mental illness lends well to being romanticized. 

There are few primarily physical manifestations of mental illness. This means much of it has gone unnoticed or uncared for in the past, and several symptoms of mental illness were previously classified as quirks of personality. A lot of work in treating mental illnesses has been this ongoing separation of symptom from nonpathological personality, with some success. The ‘scatterbrained child’ who just can’t sit still or pay attention is now tested for ADHD, rather than being labeled as willful, stubborn and lazy. But this separation is not clean. Starting with the damaging Hollywood narratives and persisting in social media’s less than clinical efforts at creating awareness, mental illness is being romanticized, making beautiful victims out of those who can say “same” to a list of traits that just might be exhibited by a person with a mental illness. Clinical psychologist Sorina Crihană-Dascălu puts it this way, “…it is rarely a matter of a scientifically proven correlation with reality and facts, but rather a semantic interpretation bordering on the literary and artistic: literature, screenplays, theatre, film etc.” Simply put, the representation of sensitive topics in media which are tailored to create fans or build emotional investment and thus followership, is bound to make the topic somewhat attractive. There is a suicidal aesthetic. A depressed aesthetic. Beautifully grunge photography and cinematography making the mentally ill a symbol of haunted style. Creating a desire to be depressed. A “pining to be mysterious, haunted, fascinating”.

What is the measurable impact of TikTok, and all social media, on improving mental health? Nothing so far. Suicide rates among young people are still steadily increasing. More and more young people are reporting suicidal ideation. There is however some anecdotal impact. And perhaps these stirrings of positive effect require a few more years of buildup before they can be measured empirically.

22-year-old Daisy* believes TikTok has affected her mental health positively. “Due to the fact that TikTok’s fyp (For You page) algorithm works by analyzing content you like or otherwise engage with, after a few weeks of using the app it’s pretty common to constantly come across relatable content. Even if the content isn’t specifically geared towards mental health, it’s quite helpful to constantly come across people who are going through the same thing you are. Or feel the exact same way you do. That being said, I do follow a few mental health content creators. Not a lot. But some. I like a lot of their content.”

For better or worse, the algorithm encourages you to see more of what you’ve seen, and if what you’ve seen and connected with is misguided, it is easy to go on from there. Fortunately, the rise of a semi-organized niche and the label of mental health creators can force a bit of responsibility into the conversation. If mental health content creation becomes an official niche, certain standards may more easily permeate the medium and it will be easier to crack down on content that glorifies rather than points toward managing and dealing with mental illness.

Ultimately, TikTok is a new hub for conversations about mental health, and a point of influence for many young people. TikTok’s influence could be benign. Maybe.

*Names have been changed at the request of the subject.