Pop Therapy: Helpful or harmful?
In the age of our phones knowing more about us than we know ourselves, the litany of information at our fingertips can be empowering and also a little scary. As I get more entrenched in the mental healthcare space, my social media feeds are starting to pick up on this trend in my life, surfacing content on everything from SSRIs that don’t cause weight gain (gag) to mindfulness techniques.
While I hope it goes without saying that you can’t trust everything you see on the internet, I want to draw specific attention to the benefits and hazards of pop-therapy and self-help TikTok. Since its emergence, TikTok has brought the world together in a way no other social media platform had before. Suddenly, in the midst of the most isolating time of our lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, we received a connective beacon that taught us to dance, how to get grease stains out of our favorite shirt, and share similar experiences with people around the world. As the platform evolved, Capitalism crept in, including the TikTok Shop, influencer marketing, and compensating creators for the content they produce. None of this is inherently bad, however it’s important for helping professionals to be mindful of the information they share particularly around mental health diagnoses and treatment.
Lately on TikTok, I’ve personally seen videos from therapists, psychiatrists, and everyday people referencing specific diagnoses like ADHD, anxiety, OCD, and the like. On one hand, these videos can open a door to language viewers may not have had previously. It can feel liberating to finally know the name for the sensations they have struggled to articulate. Particularly for women and people of color, who are often overlooked by the healthcare system, it can feel powerful to put a name to an otherwise shadowy feeling or set of symptoms.
The community of therapy-Tok is also of benefit to many without access to formal mental healthcare. Following a therapist that provides brief recommendations or explanations when weekly sessions with a personal therapist are out of reach can yield feelings of self-discovery and connectedness. The comment section, shockingly, can be an encouraging space to share personal experiences with others joined by an algorithmic bond. That being said, I have concerns about what is shared by helping professionals.
While social media can be a place of connectivity, when important health information is shared in under three minutes, important disclaimers generally don’t make the cut. While I assume positive intent on the part of these helping professionals, I find it irresponsible to use diagnostic language so casually in a space of mass consumption. When the algorithm learns our interest in these types of videos, it reinforces it by sharing more and more content of a similar nature. The recurrence of this content can make it easy for even the most educated person to identify with what they’re seeing based on the frequency.
On the creator’s end, it behooves the helping professional to make content en masse because the more there is to consume, the more likely that one video will go viral. This means the quality of every video may suffer, sharing half baked information with positive intent, but potentially damaging consequences. By blanketing diagnostic criteria as all or nothing, versus carefully explaining the spectrum of severity and comorbid conditions, the risk of inaccurate self-diagnoses can set already vulnerable people up for more challenges in their journey of self-reflection.
As someone entering the mental health space with a background in social media marketing, I can understand the multiple perspectives associated with this type of content. Regardless of intent, as helping professionals we are accountable for ensuring the content we produce, be it on TikTok or elsewhere (even this blog!), is responsible, factual, and forthright.
These opinions are my own.
