Commentary: Reducing mental health to buzzwords and online trends may do more harm than good

If you’ve been on Instagram recently, you may have seen Insta stories of giddy teens dumping water — which doesn’t even contain ice — on their friends in the name of #SpeakYourMIND. Influencers give pretty speeches in which they claim “mental health is important!” and give a cheerful thumbs-up of support.

According to its own mission statement, Active Minds, the organization behind this latest ice bucket challenge, claims to foster a “diverse movement of peer mental health champions” that “transform mental health norms across society.” And while that is a well-intentioned cause, what exactly does it have to do with mental health awareness? The nonprofit’s website bats around words such as depression, anxiety, advocacy and change, but it’s unclear what exactly this organization is doing with the $300,000 raised by the ice bucket challenge — and the actual impact of these efforts is murky to discern at best.

Besides, if the success of the original ice bucket challenge in raising awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was questionable, why do we think it would work for mental health now?

The problem nowadays with mental health isn’t that it’s taboo to discuss; it’s how much we’ve turned mental health terms into buzzwords and online trends that spread misinformation. Youths may think their limited exposure to and experience with mental illness, be it in health class or through a stint of now-very-common depression or anxiety, means that they understand all there is to the endless ocean that is mental health. This false security in knowledge means that they aren’t likely to seek out more information and may dismiss people who tell them to educate themselves.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good thing that there are “more than 15,000 young adults … (who are) passionate advocates and educators for mental health,” as Active Minds reports. But this may be like having someone with melanoma advocating for those dealing with leukemia and claiming they have personal connections to this battle because of their experience with melanoma.

Instead of actually educating themselves about serious mental illnesses, these youths may be convinced to douse themselves in water and throw around terms such as “Menty B,” meaning “mental breakdown.”

The danger of using these terms so flippantly, particularly as internet slang, is illustrated by the “prevalence inflation hypothesis,” as presented in a 2023 paper by researchers from the United Kingdom and Australia. I repeatedly hear kids say they’re having a panic attack when in fact they’re mildly stressed by an upcoming test — so much to the point I may not get the help I need for an actual panic attack. As kids hear these disorders referenced more often, through trends such as the ice bucket challenge, they may “misinterpret milder and more transient forms of distress as mental health problems,” the researchers conclude.

We must reform our use of mental health language so that we’re not propagating stereotypes and allowing them to be turned into an “interesting” facet of our personalities. This all begins with a more critical look at what the #SpeakYourMIND ice bucket challenge actually is — a dumb trend for people chasing internet virality while trying to look cute, who are not raising awareness for mental health.