Over Half of TikTok's Top Mental Health Videos Contain Misinformation

A new investigation from a major news outlet found that more than half of the top videos under TikTok's #mentalhealthtips hashtag contain inaccurate or misleading information — and the findings raise real questions about what millions of people, especially young users, are absorbing as mental health advice.

The investigation took the top 100 videos under the hashtag and had them reviewed by academic experts and mental health professionals. One example flagged as problematic: a video claiming you can relieve anxiety by eating an orange in the shower.

A TikTok spokesperson pushed back on the methodology. "There are clear limitations to the methodology of this study which opposes free expression and suggests that people should not be allowed to share their own stories," the spokesperson said. "At TikTok, we proactively work with health experts at the World Health Organization and others to promote reliable information on our platform and remove 98% of harmful misinformation before it's reported to us."

TikTok has since removed two of the specific videos flagged in the investigation.

The Most Common Problem — Turning Normal Feelings Into Diagnoses

The investigation's most consistent finding wasn't outright false claims — it was something subtler and arguably more insidious: videos that take ordinary human emotions and reframe them as symptoms of serious mental illness.

Dan Poulter, a former UK health minister and NHS psychiatrist, described the pattern directly. These videos "pathologize everyday experiences and emotions, suggesting that they equate to a diagnosis of serious mental illness," he said. "This is providing misinformation to impressionable people and can also trivialize the life experiences of people living with serious mental illnesses."

One specific example cited by Liam Modlin, a therapist and psychology researcher at King's College London, was content equating ordinary tiredness or low energy with clinical depression. "While some of the 'symptoms' overlap with depression, these can be attributed to a range of afflictions and struggles," Modlin said.

Modlin also pointed to videos misusing therapeutic language more broadly — including content that categorized repeated apologizing as a form of abuse. He warned that this "risks encouraging viewers to self-diagnose or mislabel complex relational struggles as abuse" without the "sufficient context or diagnostic nuance" a real assessment requires.

The "Quick Fix" Problem

Beyond mislabeling normal feelings as pathology, the investigation also flagged videos promoting unproven treatments framed as fast, simple cures. One example involved advice suggesting that writing about a traumatic experience for 15 minutes could resolve trauma within an hour — bypassing therapy altogether.

"No research suggests this is sufficient for cure, definitely not in an hour, and there is risk of independently forcing oneself back into this traumatic mindset without the support of an experienced therapist," said Amber Johnston, an accredited psychotherapist.

This is the category that worries clinicians most. A video that romanticizes self-diagnosis is misleading. A video that tells someone to deliberately revisit trauma alone, without professional support, and expect resolution within an hour carries real potential for harm.

TikTok's Position and the Limits of Content Moderation

TikTok's community guidelines state the platform doesn't "allow misinformation that may cause significant harm to individuals or society, regardless of intent," relying on independent fact-checkers, public health authority guidance, and a database of previously verified claims. The company also pointed to a year-long partnership announced with the World Health Organization to produce science-based health and wellbeing content.

The tension here is a familiar one in platform moderation generally — the difference between content that violates explicit rules and content that's simply unhelpful, oversimplified, or misleading without crossing into a clearly bannable category. A video that's wrong about anxiety treatment doesn't necessarily look like traditional misinformation, like a false medical claim about a vaccine. It looks like someone sharing what feels like personal, relatable advice — which is exactly what makes it spread so effectively and what makes platforms reluctant to treat it as harmful at scale.

Why This Matters Beyond One Hashtag

Mental health content has become one of the most engaged-with categories on TikTok, particularly among younger users who increasingly turn to social media before — or instead of — a therapist or doctor. Surveys in recent years have consistently found that a significant share of Gen Z users say they've gotten mental health information primarily from social media rather than clinical sources.

That shift makes the accuracy of viral mental health content a genuine public health question, not just a content moderation debate. When the most viewed advice in a category is more often wrong than right, the platform isn't just hosting bad information — it's actively shaping how a generation understands their own minds, sometimes encouraging self-diagnosis over professional evaluation, and sometimes offering false promises of quick fixes for problems that took years to develop.

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