Young women in the United States are openly revealing on TikTok and Instagram that they take antidepressants, and a medication that people once tried to hide is now being portrayed on social media as a trending fad.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Oct. 18 (local time), Korin Bieri, in her 30s and living in Texas, encountered the antidepressant Lexapro while listening to a podcast as she experienced loneliness and anxiety. Bieri received a prescription for a generic drug with the same ingredient as Lexapro through the telemedicine company Hers and posted a video on TikTok of herself taking it. As a community formed around related hashtags, thousands of followers said, "It feels like my story," showing empathy.
Bieri's case is not unusual. According to the data analytics company Exolyt, TikTok hashtags for antidepressants have 1.3 billion views, and Lexapro exceeds 500 million. Young influencers used hashtags like "#livelaughlexapro" and "#zoloftgang" to humorously express that they take antidepressants. The telemedicine company Hims & Hers commercialized this mood with a campaign saying, "Don't be ashamed of your meds." It paid influencers $3,000 to $10,000 per post and invested more than $500 million in digital ads targeting women.
The reversal from a time when taking antidepressants was taboo has been driven by the much easier access to mental health services after the COVID-19 pandemic. As online treatment platforms spread, people could get prescriptions based only on questionnaires without meeting clinicians in person. These telemedicine corporations claim they "removed the shame of taking medication and improved access to mental health care."
But side effects followed. Experts noted that prescriptions are being handed out without medical judgment and pointed to gaps in managing adverse effects.
In fact, in the United States, the average duration of antidepressant use reaches five years, but there is not much evidence on the effectiveness of long-term use. Recent research reported that two-thirds of patients who took the drugs for more than two years experienced withdrawal symptoms. Mark Stone, a former researcher at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said, "The benefits of taking medication are clear, but side effects like sexual dysfunction or emotional blunting cannot be ignored." Psychiatrist Josef Witt-Doerring warned, "It is a problem when antidepressants are packaged on social media as 'lifestyle aids,'" adding, "Mental health cannot be solved with a single pill."
Bieri, who posted a video on TikTok of taking Lexapro, also experienced side effects such as emotional blunting, decreased libido, and weight gain, and ultimately stopped the medication. "At first I got better after taking it, but everything fell apart," Bieri said.
Another influencer who revealed on social media that she took antidepressants, Nadya Okamoto, said she stopped the medication, saying "my emotions went numb and my libido disappeared." Ariella Scharf, a Zoloft user, complained of vomiting and dizziness as withdrawal symptoms and said, "The drug that saved my life ultimately broke me."