A 30-second reel can’t diagnose you, but it’s making people label themselves anyway

‘A thirty-second reel cannot explain a psychiatric condition,’ says Dr Divya Nallur, clinical director at mental healthcare provider Amaha. ‘People watch these and start labelling themselves, or their friends or family members. No assessment, nothing.’

Conversations around mental health have grown louder over the past decade, but understanding and care have struggled to keep pace. Social media and AI-generated content are adding to the noise, making it easier than ever for misinformation to spread alongside genuine medical information — and awareness without accurate understanding can create a different problem in itself.

Three conditions in particular carry outsized stereotypes: schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder (DID) and bipolar disorder. According to the World Health Organization, one in every eight people globally lives with a mental disorder, with around 24 million people living with schizophrenia and nearly 40 million with bipolar disorder. DID is considerably rarer, but frequent portrayal in books, films and television has made it disproportionately familiar to the public.

Dr Asha, a psychiatrist at Bengaluru’s SPARSH Hospital, said film and television have historically portrayed DID and schizophrenia in sensational ways, often linking them with violence or unpredictable behaviour. She said authentic storytelling backed by evidence can help correct these misconceptions, and that public awareness must extend beyond recognising disorder names to understanding symptoms and replacing judgement with empathy.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Dr Partha Sarathi Sahana