Suzie* was a typical 22-year-old recent college grad from the Midwest who was admitted into my mental health clinic in Austin with a variety of increasingly common psychiatric disorders: depression, self-harm (cutting her arms) and a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) diagnosis. BPD is a serious personality disorder that has 50 times the suicide rate of the general population and is typified by black and white thinking, self-harm behavior, emotional volatility, impulsive behavior, shifting self-image and feelings of “emptiness.”
While Susie did initially present with some of the classic BPD symptoms (feeling empty and suicidal), something didn’t add up. Unlike most BPD clients, she didn’t have any of the early red flags; she had good grades and many friends in high school with stable relationships and a stable home environment — and no history of mental illness in her family.
During Suzie’s treatment, we discovered the real culprit: she’d been spending 12-15 hours a day on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube after becoming depressed when her friends went away to university while she stayed home and attended community college. Initially trying to better understand her depression, she started to follow BPD influencers and joined online BPD groups, where she said that she felt a sense of belonging. Slowly and unwittingly, she started emulating what she was learning about BPD online — like cutting her arms after watching videos of influencers declare that cutting helped them feel in control — or at least “feel something.”
https://nypost.com/2022/09/17/how-social-media-is-literally-making-teens-mentally-ill-doctor/
