Social media is a prominent source of mental health misinformation.

Trauma, ADHD, ASD, suicide, personality disorders, and psychosis are common subjects of misinformation.

Exposure to misinformation and health literacy are two key variables in the vulnerability to being misled.

Barriers to safety and trust with professionals raise issues at a higher level within the healthcare system.

Misinformation about mental health has been identified across various online spaces, including Facebook, Reddit, and, prominently, TikTok. In 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General even named health misinformation as a public health crisis, and for good reason. Mental health misinformation can:

Increase stigma and perpetuate prejudice, discrimination, and rejection from others

Pathologize normal experiences

Misattribute symptoms of one disorder to another (i.e., some diagnoses are more “popular” than others on social media)

All of which ultimately thwarts self-understanding, intensifies widespread problems of isolation and loneliness, and interferes with getting the appropriate treatment.

The frightening truth is that the public is regularly exposed to, believing, and acting on information that is inaccurate, misleading, and/or outright harmful. However, the average person still faces real barriers to accessing accurate information from trustworthy sources. So, as you and others in your life voyage out into the murky waters of online self-education, consider what recent research has revealed about online mental health misinformation, what increases the risk of being misled, and how we can protect ourselves against misleading or outright false pieces of information.

Starvaggi and colleagues (2024) reviewed, summarized, and offered reflections on the state of mental health misinformation on social media. The article presents an overall concerning picture of mental health misinformation on TikTok (i.e., 31 percent deemed “scientifically inaccurate” and 14 percent “potentially damaging”). Nonetheless, it seems that certain topics are more subject to misinformation than others.

One study found misinformation to be particularly common around the subjects of suicide, personality disorders, psychosis, and treatment (Hudon et al., 2025), whereas another report found that trauma-related and neurodevelopmental........

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