I’m scrolling through a sea of “siren eyes vs doe eyes” and dance routine videos after I see a TikTok that stops my thumb in my tracks. Within the video, titled “first time on the psych ward”, a young girl alternatively plays the a part of a newbie patient and a daily at a mental sanatorium. “Don’t hassle on the lookout for screws up there, they’re all rounded and never sharp,” says the creator because the psych ward regular, adding that there aren’t any hand sanitisers, sporks or pointed pencils either (the subtext being: “you possibly can’t get away with self-harming so easily here”).

Curious, I clicked on the #psychward hashtag within the caption and located myself tumbling down a TikTok rabbit hole. With 1.4 billion views and over 100,000 videos, this subgenre where predominantly young creators share their psych ward experiences is prospering. The earliest videos date back to 2020, but recent TikToks are being added to the hashtag each week.

Among the content is filmed in real-time at psych wards and follows a ‘day within the life’ format, because the patient attends group therapy, paints, journals, or takes medication. Others are darkly satirical, and joke about on the lookout for objects to self-harm with. A number of are more harrowing, with users recounting stories of being forcibly restrained and drugged against their will of their wards.

Talking about mental health online will almost all the time produce polarising results. These videos can mean various things to different people – for instance, a video where a user’s self-harm scars are visible could be triggering to at least one person, but could be seen as a helpful try to combat stigma surrounding self-harm to another person. Yet unlike the time-worn portrayals of mental health facilities in popular media (think eerie prison vibes in Shutter Island or downright monstrous in Ratched) that only reinforce misconceptions about mental illness, these videos make us see things from the creators’ perspectives.

“Making funny videos about my experience on the psych ward may be very cathartic – it releases lots of frustration from my time inside,” says Maryland-based Ayza Diaz, a 19-year-old who was admitted to a psych ward after a bout of LSD-induced psychosis. For Diaz, her ironic videos – where carers take away journals or threaten to revoke day-room privileges – are less about exposing a warped medical system, and more about accepting her own journey by sharing it online.

Community can also be a big a part of psych ward TikTok. Comments like “that is on point” and “you’re hilarious” remind Diaz that she is just not alone. In a single instance, Giuiliana Pandolfi, a Boston-based mental health technician, even commented on her video. “I’m on the verge of quitting…the people I work with are ignorant and always talk shit about their patients,” she wrote. For Diaz, this was validating.

Pandolfi, who has borderline personality disorder herself, works at a psych ward and believes having this space on TikTok is useful to create awareness and discover a community. “After I was in highschool, I didn’t have a spot to share my feelings, and I ponder if that might have eased my journey,” she tells Dazed over a phone call.

Besides finding comfort in a shared community, members of psych ward TikTok are also motivated by a have to dispel murky tropes about mental illness and in-patient care. Before Olivia Ancell – a London-based beauty TikToker – was admitted to a psych ward, she had no idea what the inside one looked like. “Earlier I used to be anxious about what to anticipate and desired to share my experience so people understand it’s not all bad, and possibly feel encouraged to hunt the assistance they need,” Ancell says. She was admitted to a care facility in May this 12 months for post-traumatic anxiety and since posting the video, she has advisable her facility to many who reached out. 

“I used to be anxious about what to anticipate and desired to share my experience so people understand it’s not all bad, and possibly feel encouraged to hunt the assistance they need” – Olivia Ancell

Yet as all the time, sharing hyper-personal stories on social media could be a double-edged sword. Ancell’s medical insurance covers treatment at a non-public psych ward, which is inaccessible to the vast majority of people. Ancell is aware of this, and has pinned a comment acknowledging that she is “lucky” and has trusted the NHS previously, yet essentially the most common retort she receives on the video is people shaming her privilege and blaming her for glamorising mental illness. At one point the anxiety from it got so bad that she limited comments on the post.

In fact, there also stays the fear of negative in-patient experiences scaring away viewers, especially when teenagers today take social media more seriously than ever. A recent Ofcom report found that, for the primary time, Instagram was the most well-liked news source amongst teenagers, utilized by 29 per cent of them in 2022, while 28 per cent used TikTok and YouTube. These statistics are troubling because fairly often, misinformation and harmful content thrive on social media making it tricky as an area for education.

Nevertheless it is unfair to position this responsibility on psych ward TikTok creators to coach others, after they’re primarily posting videos to share their personal reality. Ultimately, their experiences – be they negative, positive, or in-between – are valid, and so they should find a way to share their feelings online. The real issue is with the larger mental healthcare system, which is receiving criticism offline as well: Dr Adrian James, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, recently urged the federal government to fund six recent mental health hospitals as 1000’s of patients within the UK are currently being treated in buildings which can be dangerous and unfit to be used.

One other common critique of this TikTok subgenre is that these memeified videos could normalise self-harm and encourage those that hurt themselves to maintain going. But Anna Bailie, a PhD student at University of York researching mental health cultures on social media, believes censoring potentially harmful content online might not be one of the best ways forward.

“Instagram began blurring pictures that show self-harm,” she says. “Nevertheless, an interviewee told me she posted an on a regular basis picture where her scars were visible and that image was taken down, which made her very existence feel censored,” she explains. Evidently, it’s complicated – while moderators might need preempted an Instagram user feeling triggered by the sight of self-harm scars, they did not preempt how the user who posted the photo might feel to have her body censored. Bailie adds that social media apps have to work on more sustainable strategies to manage content.

Could this online world that may be a protected space, also double as a trigger for these creators? It’s a shame that despite being in recovery themselves, these TikTokers feel the necessity to raise awareness of mental illness and take care of unfair censorship and negative comments on social media in the method. While this might be difficult for anyone, it’s even tougher when your mental health isn’t at its best.

Ultimately, the answer to this bind doesn’t lie with TikTok users, but with health services. While within the short-term, psych ward videos might help people share their experiences, discover a community and even destigmatize in-patient care – this may only get us up to now. Only long-term, systemic change can lighten the negativity that looms over this digital community, through higher, more cost-effective public healthcare, which works for everybody.