The Trouble with TikTok Therapy
"Eat oranges in the shower to combat anxiety, heal your trauma with 15 minutes of writing, or stay in your pit, 'bed rotting' to improve your mental health." Spend enough time on social media and it can seem as though there is a simple solution for everything.
I can see the appeal. When you are anxious, feeling low or grappling with something painful, having someone who instantly seems to understand is reassuring. Social media has made conversations about mental health more accessible. It has given people somewhere to feel seen when professional support is expensive or difficult to find. However, feeling understood and receiving accurate advice are not necessarily the same thing.
A recent review highlights how mental health misinformation appears across social media (1). Research into its effects is still developing, so we should be careful about claiming that every misleading video causes harm. But, we should question what people are being told.
One study found TikTok posts describing CBT as “gaslighting” (2). If you felt dismissed in therapy, you have every right to say so. But that doesn’t mean CBT itself is intended to invalidate someone’s experience. Personal stories matter. The problem comes when one person’s experience becomes a sweeping claim about what a treatment is, or whether it can help anyone else. For example, someone may have had a difficult experience with a medication, but that medication may work for you.
Then there is the way we use diagnostic language.
If social media is anything to go by, a lot of us have dated a narcissist. Sometimes that label can help someone make sense of a relationship in which they felt hurt, or manipulated. Those experiences deserve to be taken seriously, whatever we call them. But someone being selfish, unfaithful or emotionally unavailable does not, on its own, establish that they have narcissistic personality disorder.
On social media, OCD is sometimes used as shorthand for being clean or organized. Enjoying a tidy kitchen or having a particular way of organizing your wardrobe is not OCD. The condition can involve distressing, intrusive thoughts and compulsions that can interfere with daily life. Reducing it to being neat or occasionally checking something misses how difficult it can be to live with.
I find myself drawn to these posts too. Videos listing ADHD traits often catch my attention, and I can recognize myself in some of what they describe. But one study found that 52 of 100 popular ADHD TikTok videos were misleading (3). Seeing yourself in a video might be a useful starting point, but a relatable checklist is not a diagnosis. If you have concerns, speak to a qualified clinician about an assessment.
These conditions are recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). We risk trivializing them when we use their names casually to describe ordinary habits or people that have treated us badly.
Trauma content can also be problematic. A short reel may offer a helpful introduction, but it cannot capture the range of ways people respond to traumatic experiences. Two people with PTSD may have very different symptoms and needs. A definitive explanation of what “people with trauma always do” can leave someone feeling either incorrectly diagnosed or excluded because their experience does not fit.
Not everyone has access to good mental health support, and mistrust of healthcare can reflect real experiences of inequality (4). My worry is that misleading advice could put people off professional treatment or persuade them to pay for something that doesn’t work. Advice can also overlook cultural differences. Being told to “just cut off” a difficult family member assumes a freedom that not everyone has, and may ignore the social importance of family and community.
So how do we make sense of it all?
When looking at a mental health post ask yourself what evidence they offer and whether they acknowledge any limitations. Are they sharing what helped them, or claiming to know what will help you? Are they encouraging you to explore your concerns, or diagnosing you from a list of common experiences?
I value how social media has made it easier for people to share their experiences of mental health. It is important that people feel less ashamed and alone. But we can take our distress seriously without assuming that every difficult experience has a clinical label. Life is complex and messy. Emotions can be painful and people can behave badly. That doesn’t always mean there is a diagnosis to be made or an easy solution to be found and most likely not in a few seconds on Tik Tok.
References
Starvaggi, I., Dierckman, C., & Lorenzo-Luaces, L. (2024). Mental health misinformation on social media: Review and future directions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 56, Article 101738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101738
Lorenzo-Luaces, L., Dierckman, C., & Adams, S. (2023). Attitudes and (mis)information about cognitive behavioral therapy on TikTok: An analysis of video content. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, Article e45571. https://doi.org/10.2196/45571
Yeung, A., Ng, E., & Abi-Jaoude, E. (2022). TikTok and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A cross-sectional study of social media content quality. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 67(12), 899–906. https://doi.org/10.1177/07067437221082854
Carlisle, B. L., & Murray, C. B. (2020). The role of cultural mistrust in health disparities. In S. B. Gulliver & L. M. Cohen (Eds.), The Wiley encyclopedia of health psychology (pp. 43–50). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119057840.ch187
