Want to Be a Good Mental Health Advocate? Learn Leadership
“Learn how to become an effective mental health advocate by mastering leadership skills. Discover tips and strategies to responsibly support and guide others in their mental health journey. Empower yourself to make a positive impact.”
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So you want to help others and become an advocate for people who suffer from mental illness? I commend you; we need as many voices at the table as we can possibly get. But let me ask you this: what motivates you to take on such a role?
One of the typical answers I hear is, “Because I also suffer from a mental illness, and I know what it’s like,” or “I want to end the stigma surrounding the subject of mental health.” These are all commendable reasons to join the good fight.
With that said, there’s more to it than one might think. Firstly, there’s advocating responsibly. If, for example, you’re not a trained mental health professional, your goal should be to offer up your own story, not to tell people they might have depression if they have a hard time getting out of bed. Mental health disorders are much more nuanced than that and require professionals to determine the diagnostic criteria for a depression diagnosis.
The second thing, well, more tied for first place, is leadership. Are you a good leader, a responsible steward of leading the pack? In other words, don’t be like 83.7% of the influencers on TikTok and spread false or misleading information about mental illness. Another 14.2% of videos containing potentially harmful advice(PlushCare)
Additionally, if you have limited experience on the subject at hand or you’re coming from your perspective only, throwing yourself out there is not responsible. Furthermore, if you’re willing to sit down and educate yourself through reputable means, such as acquiring an education in the field or reading studies from places like PubMed, then you should see yourself as someone who knows little on the subject. In other words, having thousands of followers on social media doesn’t qualify you as a leader.
Now, that’s not to say you can’t become a leader through hard work and dedication to accumulating the expertise needed; it means that your content should be limited to your own experience or well-researched opinion pieces. We were all on the bottom rung at one point, and all of us, experts or otherwise, need to keep learning in order to lead the mental health advocacy movement responsibly. In order to minimize the harms, we must fill in the gaps of our knowledge as much as possible.
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At the end of the day, we all want to help in our own way, but we must learn to be leaders first and foremost. Leaders are responsible and are constantly evaluating the potential ramifications of their work. Remember, many symptoms of mental illness overlap and need experts — psychologists, psychiatrists, and, in some cases, doctors — to diagnose mental illness. For the rest of us, the least we can do is act responsibly and lend support. True advocacy must incorporate encouraging people not to believe everything they read or watch on the internet.
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Sources:
PlushCare. “How Accurate is Mental Health Advice on TikTok?” PlushCare, Link to the article. Accessed 18 June 2024. https://plushcare.com/blog/tiktok-mental-health/?adlt=strict&toWww=1&redig=B3D9B82E9E5345818B2945AC05ABEAF1
