Depression presentations, stigma, and mental health literacy: A critical review and YouTube content analysis

We review knowledge concerning public presentations for depression. These presentations impact illness beliefs and may influence public stigma, self-stigma, and depression literacy. We provide a critical review of messages, images, and information concerning depression's causes, continuum conceptualization, timeline, curability, coping/treatment regimen, and strengths. To provide data regarding the prevalence of particular presentations, we conducted a content analysis of 327 videos about depression representative of material on the YouTube social media platform. YouTube presentations of depression indicate that depression: 1) is caused by either biological (49.5%) or environmental (41.3%) factors; 2) is a categorical construct (71%); 3) is treatable, with 61% of relevant videos (n = 249) presenting recovery as "likely"; 4) is chronic, found in 76% of videos mentioning timeline; 5) is recurrent (32.5%); 6) is mostly treated via medication (47.4%) or therapy (42.8%), although diet/exercise (28.4%) and alternative treatments (22.6%) are commonly endorsed; and 7) is rarely associated with strength (15.3%). Nearly one-third of videos were uploaded by non-professional vloggers, while just 9% were uploaded by mental health organizations. We discuss how these presentations may influence stigmatizing attitudes and depression literacy among people with and without depression and suggest future research directions to better understand how to optimize public presentations.