[ad_1]
Some of her clips are generic, eg A Short Ode to Communication Between mental patients and pasta, others see it as a real diagnosis “You may have BPD.” or borderline personality disorder. Sometimes people ask her to solve certain situations. She tries to do at least a week’s worth of research, checking websites and message boards and interviewing people with a specific diagnosis via direct mail. “Everybody talks about it,” she added. [panic attacks] Differently and not all feel the same.
She has no formal training and often expresses feelings such as anxiety and depression at some level. Commentators occasionally accuse her of promoting “teenage” pathology or self-diagnosis.
In real life, mental health information and care is scarce. 1 in 3 counties in the United States do not have a licensed psychologist, according to the American Psychological Association, and Americans say cost is the biggest barrier to seeking mental health help. But on the internet, mental health tips are everywhere: TikTok videos with the caption #MentalHealth have garnered more than 43.9 billion views, according to Sprout Social, an analytics company, and mental health issues on social media are on the rise every year.
The growing popularity of the topic means mental health content creators are filling the healthcare void. But social media apps aren’t designed to prioritize accurate, helpful information, critics say, so whatever content gets the biggest response. Young people can see their deep struggles as fodder for advertisers and their own advertisers. In the absence of a roadmap, even for licensed professionals, mental health practitioners are defining their own ethics.
“I don’t want to give anyone the wrong advice,” says Moloney. “I got some [followers] He starts crying saying ‘thank you’ and stuff like that. Although it may seem small, to someone else, it can actually have a big impact.
such as depression and anxiety levels Sharp During the pandemic and options for accessible care It decreased, creators shared a variety of content, including first-person accounts of mental illness and videos detailing the symptoms of bipolar disorder. In most cases, their followers are considered balloons.
Creators and viewers say the content is helpful. They also admit that hugging him will bring such dangers Misinformation and harmful self-diagnosis. They have some high profile accounts Criticized To share advice that is not supported by most experts. Many creators sell courses and books or enter into advertising partnerships, which opens doors. Conflicts of interest. A lot of online content simply tells listeners what they want to hear, what creators say, and relatively uncommon situations. narcissistic personality disorder Commentators receive an inordinate amount of attention, checking out their loved ones. And because of algorithms, people who show interest in this type of content will see more of it.
Sometimes creators find themselves dealing with a flood of messages from followers or struggling to control how viewers interpret their content.
“It’s weird that I’m actually feeding myself into a moving vessel where people define ‘mental illness’ and to some extent feed into an algorithm that encourages people to go down this pipeline,” says Rayne Fisher-Quan. She opened up about her struggle with mental illness on TikTok with her 225,000 followers. “There’s a concerted effort to get it right on mental illness, and especially young women’s mental illness. It’s a very marketable commodity now.”
Although the case of professional organizations such as the American Counseling Association Some social media guidelinesThey tend to misunderstand or ignore the needs of the creative economy, therapists say. Non-professionals can also speak. Almost nothing with few results. Young people can’t always tell the difference between professionals and hackers, creators say.
“Even if the therapist isn’t on social media, they’re their client, and their client is influenced by what they see on social media, and they’re bringing that directly into the session,” says Instagram creator and licensee Sadaf Siddiqui. Therapist.
Training is important. So is experience, say creators.
Many inventors are not experts, and many claim to have failed in the past with experts.
Fisher-Quann’s inbox is full of the kinds of questions you’d whisper to a dear friend in the middle of the night: Do these difficult feelings mean I’m depressed? Does having casual sex mean I’m gay?
If the question touches on something she has experienced, she may respond. Other times, the messages go unanswered, says the 21-year-old writer and cultural critic. People occasionally message her to say they’re considering suicide, and she says she directs them to professional resources. But it hurts to know they’re not getting the real-world help they need, Fisher-Kwan said.
“I’m not comfortable telling people to institutionalize themselves because of that institutional failure,” she says. But I’m very critical of capitalist forums where people present themselves as experts and end up giving advice that can be very fanciful.
Determining who is considered an expert is not always easy. Creator Clara Kernig, who has 159,000 followers on Instagram, describes herself in her bio as a “professional people pleaser.” She said she earned that title through experience.
After dropping out of her dream PhD program against her family’s wishes, Kernig said she began learning about codependency, a traumatic and “people-pleasing” thing, from books and the Internet. She is now very healthy, and produces her own mental health content, including “5 things we think are good people-pleasing qualitiesHe said.
“I don’t want to denigrate medical professionals, but I want to say that there are other ways to educate people and get information,” she said. “Maybe I put something wrong out there, and I’m hoping that my community and also the therapists out there will point that out to me in a loving way.
Some creators take it upon themselves to challenge unresearched content. San Diego Mesa College psychology professor Inna Kanevsky, the creator of TikTok, which has 1.1 million viewers, frequently makes irresponsible claims about videos posted by other creators. Some of the subjects of her criticism, Kannevsky said, speak to them, distort their experiences or misinterpret their intentions.
“It’s funny because people say, ‘You’re so friendly,'” Kanevsky said. “And I say, ‘No, I’m being mean-spirited.’ I will tell you if you post nonsense.
Creators control the content but not the interpretation
There’s a big difference between giving therapeutic advice and making relatable content, creators maintain. But these lines can be blurred quickly.
In addition to making posts for her 129,000 Instagram followers, Siddiqui also hosts her clients via video call. They often send her posts to other mental health creators to discuss at their meetings, and she helps them evaluate the information and decide whether it’s actionable.
The posts lead to good conversations and deep insights, Siddiqi he said. But she worries about where the algorithm will send people and whether viewers have enough time to reflect. She says it’s easy for people without real-life support to misinterpret mental health content or call themselves or others out of it.
The idea of collecting people’s own mental health journeys through a monetized and algorithm-driven app may be horrifying, but critics should hit the brakes, says Dusty Chipura, who has created TikTok videos about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and ADHD. Mental health. She doesn’t worry too much about self-diagnosis, she said, because perfectly healthy people generally don’t scroll through information about symptoms and treatments. Health care professionals also tend to underestimate people’s risk, so many people with real disabilities don’t get regular screenings, she said.
“You don’t need an ADHD diagnosis to benefit from tips and tricks and strategies,” Chipura said.
Nedra Glover Tawab, a licensed therapist and Instagram creator with 1.5 million followers, knows that audiences need to consider context and not take every word a creator says as truth. As with any marketplace, the onus is on consumers to decide whether they’re buying what a creator is selling, she said.
Who is responsible for reviewing mental health content?
In the world of online mental health guides, there is little accountability for platforms or creators if something goes wrong.
Instagram in June kick off A pilot called the Wellbeing Creator Collective will provide funding and education to about 50 American creators to help them produce “responsible” content on emotional well-being and self-esteem. The program is run by a committee of outside experts, the company says.
Linda Chamaraman, senior research scientist and director of the Youth, Media and Wellbeing Research Lab at the Wellesley Women’s Center; It is in that committee That’s what he said. Overall, participants seem to care deeply about using their platforms for good.
TikTok is committed to fostering a supportive environment for those who choose to share their personal safety journeys, and to prevent medical misinformation and other violations of our policies, a spokesperson said.
“If individuals need support, we encourage them to seek professional advice,” she said in a statement.
Ideally, social media apps should be one item in a mental health resource kit, says Jody Miller, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education who studies the relationship between youth, technology and stress.
“Young people need evidence-based resources from parents and schools outside of the Internet,” Miller said.
Often those resources are not available. So it’s up to creators to decide what kind of mental health advice they put in, Fisher-Kwan said. For her, the undermining of health care providers and the perverse incentives of social media platforms haven’t made it any easier. But she thinks she can do better — and so can her followers.
“Everything has to come from a place of self-awareness and a desire to be better. Communities can be extremely helpful for that, but they can also be extremely harmful for that,” she says.
Linda Chong in San Francisco contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link
