Mental health issues and treatment has gotten more destigmatized within the past decade. With conversations being more open and honest regarding what our bodies and minds are going through, it’s also created spaces where having a mental illness and taking things like antidepressants is “trendy.” Tayo Bero recently wrote about the “double-edged sword” that has been created through the demystification of mental illness, and how it’s important for those who are struggling to listen to the professionals when it comes to their emotional wellbeing.
Conversations regarding mental health issues and treatment have entered the cultural zeitgeist heavily within the past decade. People having the freedom and ability to discuss their struggles, relate to others, and find proper treatment for themselves has created a lot of positive spaces and experiences around the world.
However, in our modern digital age, the conversations surrounding mental health have become a slippery slope where these very serious and real issues are becoming trivialized, and younger people talking about their treatments has become “trendy.”
Award-winning culture writer and producer Tayo Bero recently wrote about the “double-edged sword” that has been created through the demystification of mental illness, emphasizing the importance of listening to the professionals, as opposed to the internet, when it comes to one’s emotional wellbeing.
Bero cited recent data analyzed and released by the Wall Street Journal that showed content relating to antidepressants specifically has significantly increased in recent years. In fact, the hashtag #antidepressants has reached over 1.3 billion views.
“Antidepressants are all the rage now, so much so that influencers are promoting them on TikTok, where mostly millennial and gen Z women have built micro-communities around hashtags like #lexaprotok, #zoloftgang and #livelaughlexapro.”
“As a Black woman who has been taking antidepressants for years, I’m glad that we’re continuing to demystify and destigmatize mental illness. But it’s a slippery slope from that to the memeification of very serious disorders, and drug companies are not doing enough to find a healthy, responsible middle ground,” Bero wrote for the Guardian.
“While it’s still taboo to speak about mental illness in many communities, and being medicated for it continues to be stigmatized, the discourse in the west has definitely shifted. But on their journey from awkward topic to wellness trend, antidepressants are having to pass through the social media meat grinder and the result is that we’ve swung too far in the other direction, launching young women in particular into very dangerous territory where their health is concerned.
Non-medical professionals touting the benefits of medications that their followers can easily get? What could go wrong?
Well, lots of things, many of them rooted in the ethical gray area that “patient influencers” inhabit. These influencers have been around for a few years, promoting drugs to trusting followers; sometimes they have close links to drugmakers, a 2023 study found.
Patient influencers of all kinds offer medical advice to their followers – that’s bad enough – and a researcher behind the 2023 study says some have done so without revealing their ties to the very drug companies they are promoting” Bero explained.
“Influencers touting antidepressants for pay generally use hashtags such as #ad to disclose their relationships to companies they highlight. But patient influencers may gloss over side-effects – which is particularly concerning when telehealth is making antidepressants easier to acquire than ever.”
Bero went on to discuss how the American healthcare system is aggressively driven by profit, so the utilization of social media to market medication is unfortunately not surprising. In fact, the US is one of only two countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to create and distribute advertisements for prescription drugs.
Billions of dollars are spent on advertisements by pharmaceutical companies every single year. With both depression and anxiety rates rising among younger people as well, the “monthly rate of antidepressants dispensed to young people rose 66% from January 2016 to December 2022, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics, and it’s the perfect storm,” Bero cited.
“Antidepressant use can be messy, stressful, confusing and seemingly interminable (don’t even get me started on my experience with withdrawal symptoms). It is not the kind of experience that vulnerable young people should be socially coerced into, especially via the machinations of capitalist vultures.
Young people need way more than a two-minute TikTok to figure out what they should do to get better. And while it is crucial for mental health services to be far more accessible, handling the treatment process like a QVC ad is undeniably irresponsible,” Bero concluded.
Tayo Bero is an award-winning culture writer, radio producer, Guardian US columnist, and so much more. To read more of her amazing work, click here!
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
