Mental Health Awareness Is Backfiring: New Science Shows How ‘Helpful’ Campaigns Are Manufacturing Illness

For decades, the mental health industry and its allies in media, government, and education have operated on a simple assumption: the more mental health awareness we spread, through campaigns, school programs, social media, and public service announcements, the better. Raise awareness, reduce stigma, encourage help-seeking, and mental health will surely improve. New evidence shows the opposite is happening. Well-intentioned awareness efforts are actively backfiring, manufacturing distress, inflating diagnoses, and turning normal human emotions into chronic “disorders.” The shocking result is that these campaigns are turning mentally fit people into self-diagnosed mentally ill patients, with symptoms effectively “contracted” from the awareness...