In recent years, people have become more comfortable sharing their personal experiences with mental health, a sign that the stigma surrounding it is diminishing.

On Instagram and TikTok combined, there are nearly 90 million posts with the hashtag mental health.

In terms like gaslighting, trauma, and toxic relationships are now part of everyday conversation.

But not all the information online is accurate.

Stephanie Syve spoke with Taisha Caldwell Harvey,

a psychologist and founder of the private practice,

the Black Girl Doctor.

Taisha, how do you see social media contributing to misinformation about mental health?

Yes, there's so much we're seeing.

Really, anybody right now can say anything that they want to on the internet and about any topic.

And while in a way that can be really good, it also means that, you know, the rate at which something spreads like wildfire has

nothing to do with how accurate the information is. And right now we're seeing so many creators

and people just sharing their experiences online, but equating their experience to a reality

for others and to fact. And it's just not really, it's not really true.

To what extent do you think social media, the misinformation, the self-diagnoses,

leads to people sort of pathologizing what might be considered more normal emotions and

stress responses that we all have? And what are the potential risks of doing that?

Yeah, I think one of the huge dangers really is invalidating or downplaying mental illness by

equating it to symptoms of a diagnosis. And so we can all experience anxiety. We can all

experience sadness, periods of high distractability. But that doesn't

mean that you have an anxiety disorder. It doesn't mean that you have depression. It doesn't

mean that you're neurodivergent and it doesn't mean that you have PTSD. And using language in that

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