Most mental health related videos on TikTok are received with support, study suggests

Quite a few people transform to the internet for overall health-similar details. Adolescents tend to look for information and facts about healthier existence (fitness, diet program, sexual wellbeing, mental well being, etcetera.) on the internet on social media these types of as TikTok, a video clip sharing platform. New exploration released in JMIR Formative Analysis located that quite a few video clips on mental health subject areas are acquired positively and with guidance from other customers.

“Health-similar stories from friends are specially valued among the adolescents. Influencers on social media, adolescents who create articles, and microcelebrities are progressively critical resources for overall health-linked data and social help,” wrote study author Corey H. Basch and colleagues.

“Online social media networks deliver beneficial chances to hook up with each individual other to share experiences and procedures for well being and wellness, these types of as meditation, mindfulness, stress aid, and those people certain to mental overall health conditions.” TikTok is a very common social media application with adolescents and scientists ended up intrigued in exploring the mental wellness similar articles on the platform.

To do this, researchers searched for English-language videos on TikTok utilizing the hashtag #mentalhealth and collected a sample of the initial 100 video clips. All videos were being analyzed for articles groups these kinds of as Standard Psychological Well being, Stress, Despair, Interpersonal Interactions, and other relevant types. The opinions on each movie have been also analyzed for certain themes these as giving help or validation, mentioning one’s personal expertise with the psychological overall health situation, sharing coping approaches, and other related themes.

The 100 video clips analyzed obtained a total of 1,354,100,00 sights, 266,900,00 likes, and 2,5115,954 remarks. Most films (51%) ended up in the class of Standard Mental Wellbeing. The subsequent most prevalent class (40%) was Own expertise adopted by Interpersonal relationships (18%). The remaining information types have been only represented in fewer than 15% of all video clips.

The most widespread themes in the comments had been giving aid or validation (61%) and describing other psychological overall health problems or struggles (49%). The remaining themes had been only represented in less than 20% of all movies.

Past research have expressed problem about the prospective unfavorable effects on psychological health that platforms like TikTok can have. Having said that, this details is encouraging in that most reviews on movies about people’s mental health struggles had been positive, supportive, and validating. Importantly, most of the videos in this sample were being posted by consumers, not mental overall health gurus, so potential research need to examine how tips for coping techniques are represented on TikTok.

The authors do cite some constraints to this function which includes the inclusion of only English-language videos and the lesser sample dimension.

The review, “Deconstructing TikTok Video clips on Mental Overall health Cross-sectional, Descriptive Written content Examination“, was authored by Corey H. Basch, Lorie Donelle, Joseph Fera, and Christie Jaime.