The Right Opinion | Do YouTubers Really Understand Mental Health? The Betterhelp Legacy | TRO @TheRightOpinion | Uploaded November 2018 | Updated October 2024, 5 hours ago.
The Right Opinion: Do YouTubers Really Understand Mental Health? The Betterhelp Legacy | TRO
Intro:
You see, I released a video on h3, I worked incredibly hard on the research that brought it together, the points I made, and I gave it a lot of thought. Explaining why I believed they had strayed from their original content and this had subsequently led them to take a break, I took a sympathetic point of view towards them, because how I felt, I think there are a lot of people on the verge of burnout.
However, almost immediately I released it, I had a load of comments pointing out that h3 had got themselves in another mess less than 24 hours before, leading my video to be timed fairly inconveniently . So what was this mess? Well let’s talk about BetterHelp…
Even if you’re a YouTube casual, you will have heard of BetterHelp, the online, interactive website, that promotes therapy on an accessible platform: the internet. So to give you a breakdown, if you’re a patient of this site, you sign up, and you fill out a basic form explaining what you’re looking for, and what may you may be experiencing, and what they do is that they have an extensive roster of therapists who are allegedly qualified, we’ll return to the allegedly part in a bit, anyway, they hook you up with one of these therapists. The ultimate aim? Well that’s unclear, and we’ll explain why that’s a problem in a bit, but the general aim is to improve health.
But if you’ve seen the title, you’ll know that this is a video about YouTubers, so where do they factor into this very enticing plot?
Well BetterHelp targeted a certain band of YouTubers, in fact, ones that I like to talk about the most. The individuals who are seen as moral bastions on the platform, this is no coincidence, these individuals have built special relationships with their fans, and unlike the Jake Pauls of this generation, they deal with mature subjects, they have a slightly more adult audience, this is the sort of thing that is perfect.
And honestly the environment has been set up pretty neatly for something like this to come into play. Now, make no mistake, BetterHelp has existed for a few years, since its inception in 2013, it was always purring in the background, but recently, one of their marketing executive must have spotted an opportunity in the fertile grounds of YouTube. Which is a smart idea in principle. In the last few years, YouTube has become a lot deeper than just a place where people put on facades for the day, and I’ve spoken about that in length in the past. It just seems like a progression of the culture.
Amongst a lot of the deeper topics that have popped up in the last few years, one that seems increasingly prevalent is that of “depression” and mental health, there are a multiple reasons for this. I think the online world has brought together a new set of people who find themselves away from the turmoil of their real lives, and in that escape we equally tried to find answers for the problems that we face in our minds, and one of those does come down to mental health.
Depression as such is a complex topic, we need to be able to distinguish between when we may just be experiencing mood dips, and when we actually have a chemical imbalance that disposes us to be legitimately depressed. A great example of the confusion of the two was Prince EA’s video on how you’re not depressed, you just have to shut up. Also, was great to see that Prince EA made the Mental Health Awareness day, after such an inspirational set of videos.
YouTubers know that speaking about depression is extremely sensitive, you can’t be seen as taking advantage of the topic, but equally we are in a culture where people are being encouraged to be open about their experiences with the condition, and often being open about these things can help others, and we certainly shouldn’t diminish that. On the other hand, we shouldn’t be seen as clickbaiting it, or taking advantage of the possible experiences of suffering to emotionally manipulate our audiences, so ironically it becomes a whole different balancing act on working out how to appear genuine, which in a way, is contrived within itself. But that’s a topic for a different time.
Equally, creators who use these experiences in their videos will create a bond with the audience, often creating a shared experience, and maybe helping an individual come to terms with their own struggles, and so it made perfect sense that BetterHelp reach out to these lovely creators, who are renowned for their reputability, to promote their therapy website and help others make it through the same struggles but there’s a catch, in fact there are a lot of catches.
[Watch For More]
The Right Opinion: Do YouTubers Really Understand Mental Health? The Betterhelp Legacy | TRO
Intro:
You see, I released a video on h3, I worked incredibly hard on the research that brought it together, the points I made, and I gave it a lot of thought. Explaining why I believed they had strayed from their original content and this had subsequently led them to take a break, I took a sympathetic point of view towards them, because how I felt, I think there are a lot of people on the verge of burnout.
However, almost immediately I released it, I had a load of comments pointing out that h3 had got themselves in another mess less than 24 hours before, leading my video to be timed fairly inconveniently . So what was this mess? Well let’s talk about BetterHelp…
Even if you’re a YouTube casual, you will have heard of BetterHelp, the online, interactive website, that promotes therapy on an accessible platform: the internet. So to give you a breakdown, if you’re a patient of this site, you sign up, and you fill out a basic form explaining what you’re looking for, and what may you may be experiencing, and what they do is that they have an extensive roster of therapists who are allegedly qualified, we’ll return to the allegedly part in a bit, anyway, they hook you up with one of these therapists. The ultimate aim? Well that’s unclear, and we’ll explain why that’s a problem in a bit, but the general aim is to improve health.
But if you’ve seen the title, you’ll know that this is a video about YouTubers, so where do they factor into this very enticing plot?
Well BetterHelp targeted a certain band of YouTubers, in fact, ones that I like to talk about the most. The individuals who are seen as moral bastions on the platform, this is no coincidence, these individuals have built special relationships with their fans, and unlike the Jake Pauls of this generation, they deal with mature subjects, they have a slightly more adult audience, this is the sort of thing that is perfect.
And honestly the environment has been set up pretty neatly for something like this to come into play. Now, make no mistake, BetterHelp has existed for a few years, since its inception in 2013, it was always purring in the background, but recently, one of their marketing executive must have spotted an opportunity in the fertile grounds of YouTube. Which is a smart idea in principle. In the last few years, YouTube has become a lot deeper than just a place where people put on facades for the day, and I’ve spoken about that in length in the past. It just seems like a progression of the culture.
Amongst a lot of the deeper topics that have popped up in the last few years, one that seems increasingly prevalent is that of “depression” and mental health, there are a multiple reasons for this. I think the online world has brought together a new set of people who find themselves away from the turmoil of their real lives, and in that escape we equally tried to find answers for the problems that we face in our minds, and one of those does come down to mental health.
Depression as such is a complex topic, we need to be able to distinguish between when we may just be experiencing mood dips, and when we actually have a chemical imbalance that disposes us to be legitimately depressed. A great example of the confusion of the two was Prince EA’s video on how you’re not depressed, you just have to shut up. Also, was great to see that Prince EA made the Mental Health Awareness day, after such an inspirational set of videos.
YouTubers know that speaking about depression is extremely sensitive, you can’t be seen as taking advantage of the topic, but equally we are in a culture where people are being encouraged to be open about their experiences with the condition, and often being open about these things can help others, and we certainly shouldn’t diminish that. On the other hand, we shouldn’t be seen as clickbaiting it, or taking advantage of the possible experiences of suffering to emotionally manipulate our audiences, so ironically it becomes a whole different balancing act on working out how to appear genuine, which in a way, is contrived within itself. But that’s a topic for a different time.
Equally, creators who use these experiences in their videos will create a bond with the audience, often creating a shared experience, and maybe helping an individual come to terms with their own struggles, and so it made perfect sense that BetterHelp reach out to these lovely creators, who are renowned for their reputability, to promote their therapy website and help others make it through the same struggles but there’s a catch, in fact there are a lot of catches.
[Watch For More]
