A new group of social media stars are surging on TikTok: Mental health influencers. Most of them are teen girls and young women who post videos of themselves experiencing symptoms, like Tourette’s tics or rapid switches from one personality to another due to borderline personality disorder. Others, often without any medical credentials, post videos that help viewers “self-diagnose” their own mental conditions.
These videos are getting billions of views. On TikTok alone, the hashtag #BPD (borderline personality disorder) has 3.7 billion views, #bipolar 2 billion, and #DID (dissociative identity disorder) another 1.5 billion.
Recently, psychologists have noticed a wave of adolescent girls also claiming to suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome and rare mental health conditions, such as borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia — conditions not typically seen in the teen demographic. And a common denominator between many of these symptomatic girls has been identified: Consuming mental health content on TikTok.
nypost.com/2022/03/12/tiktok-has-become-a-dangerous-mental-disorder-breeding-ground/