A year ago, I questioned whether we know enough about mental health. Since then, the evidence has only grown stronger: The answer is yes.
To be clear, conversations about mental health remain important in the right context. The danger is how television and social media amplify this messaging in ways that often do more harm than good. Furthermore, current research typically evaluates a single campaign in a gap; we hardly realize the cumulative psychological toll of being bombarded with mental health messages across multiple digital channels all day long.
Opening up the discussion about mental health is an important first step in reducing it stigma and encouraging people to seek help, high-quality studies now show that these short-term benefits are often minimal or non-existent. The long-term effects of awareness campaigns can be actively negative.
Educational campaigns and negative results
A recent study from the UK showed that mental health education campaigns with teenagers may not have positive effects in the short term and may have negative results in the long term. Scope review Guzman-Holst and others. (2025) determined that the actions of the group of schoolchildren are intended stability can lead to negative mental health effects.
A large UK trial involving 153 schools and over 12,000 students (Dayton et al., 2025) found that a mental health awareness program did not lead to short-term improvement. Most of all, it showed long-term negative effects: Students reported higher level of entry marks, such as anxiety and withdrawal, approximately one year after intervention.
Encouraging people to think about sadness can inadvertently make people sadder.
Pathology for clicks
If clinical experts struggle to design interventions that do not cause harm, the risk is greatly increased during digital stimulation. attention economy is connected with information and influence campaigns.
Many awareness-raising efforts now take place through commercial campaigns designed to sell healthy products or services. Mental health terminology, language and approaches can be used as messaging and as a necessary tool for self-care. Some advertisement Campaigns even employ voice actors who sound visibly distressed while listing routines, daily challenges, prompting viewers or listeners to pause, focus on these minor stresses, and reflect on their hidden concerns.
Unfortunately, some public workers who raise awareness often lack a basic understanding of basic research—not just about symptoms, but about the established risks of poorly implemented psychological interventions.
This creates a number of risks. Research shows that some people are more vulnerable to negative outcomes (people who are anxious, suggest) and teenagers are more likely to experience the effects (positive or negative) of advertising efforts.
Algorithms naturally prioritize content that evokes strong emotional reactions and creates back traffic. Users are always encouraged to find pathology in their daily life. Teenagers, as well as those who are naturally anxious or suggestible, are particularly vulnerable to these texting campaigns.
Theoretical explanations
Why do good campaigns lead to bad results? Four separate theories explain.
1. Concept of surgery
The concept of hazan, originally described by Haslam (2016), explains how definitions of concepts related to harm (such as abuse, insultand injury) gradually expanded to include a range of milder and more normal experiences. Over time, less severe symptoms come under the umbrella of a diagnosis (such as treating generalized anxiety disorder as depression), while qualitatively different experiences are combined into a single description (interpersonal conflicts become trauma).
This extension does not identify previously undiagnosed disorders; it creates them by encouraging healthy individuals to report symptoms that are only within the normal range of human experience.
2. The hypothesis of the spread of inflation
The prevalence inflation hypothesis suggests an increase in the rate of mental illness rather than an actual increase in the disease (Foulkes & Andrews, 2023). Constant exposure to texting encourages vigilance for signs of anxiety. Then, people reinterpret general emotional changes as indicators of a clinical condition.
Over time, the adoption of these broader interpretations of self-identification with illness that shapes behavior (e.g., abstinence stress reciprocity), which further reinforces perceived cues. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more we look for illness, the more illness we find in everyday behavior and emotions.
3. Nocebo effect
Another explanation is the nocebo effect (Petri and Rief, 2019), which is based on response expectancy theory. It’s like that placebo effect: If you expect a particular symptom to cause a symptom, your brain will often produce that feeling. In mental health contexts, it is said that controlling for “hidden symptoms” creates negative expectations.
Laboratory studies show that individuals who experience or present more anxiety are particularly vulnerable to this; when they learn about the situation, they feel the possibility of it.
4. Model of self-management of the disease
The self-management model of illness (Ahuvia & Link, 2025) explains what happens when someone accepts a diagnosis. When you accept a label, you activate a set of cultural beliefs about what the disease means. If the cultural script says that your condition is a permanent brain impairment that reduces energy, agency, ability to concentrate, or the ability to interact with other people, you can include that disability.
Viewing the cultural script changes how you interpret your characters. Someone with a diagnosis (or self-diagnosis) may stop doing what they enjoy doing because it doesn’t fit with perceptions of what people with that diagnosis label can or should do, putting themselves in a feedback loop that reinforces the illness through the illness. personality shaped with a label.
Mechanisms
Although these theories approach the problem from different psychological perspectives, they converge on similar mechanisms for why mental health awareness campaigns can have a negative impact. In their recent synthesis, Sandra and Inzlicht (2026) explain the common mechanisms in these four theories. By offering “unifying explanations for societal problems,” they help explain why awareness campaigns cause more mental health problems than they solve. Three common mechanisms are:
- Lowering the diagnostic threshold: The meanings of terms like “trauma,” “anxiety,” and “depression” have expanded to include almost any form of discomfort.
- High alert: Awareness efforts encourage people to be aware of how symptoms can affect people’s lives and monitor any mood swings for signs of an underlying disorder. It has the potential to increase these feelings.
- Strengthening negative personalities: Temporary states are traded for permanent labels that shape people’s future behavior in less adaptive ways.
Forget campaigns
We must distinguish between public awareness and personal support. Public campaigns are often broad, slow, and evidence suggests they can have negative effects. The cumulative effect of many different campaigns can be even worse. Quality personal conversations, such as those that occur in the privacy of a trusted person or therapeutic approachallow for nuance and individual context that a generic campaign can never provide.
A growing body of cognitive research suggests that forgetting is a highly adaptive and important skill. memory Researchers have identified active forgetting as an important mechanism for emotional regulation. The brain naturally diminishes the sting of negative experiences over time. Constant general texting can disrupt this natural process, allowing problems and stressors to disappear quickly or over a long period of time. When distractions force us to constantly think about daily stressors, they can inhibit our ability to naturally put minor problems in the background.
Conversations about wellness are important when they happen at the right time, with the right people. But scrolling through daily reminders of mental anguish straight to your screen and headphones is likely doing more harm than good.
