Why "Therapy-Speak" Is Everywhere, and What to Do About It

By Danielle Currin, Ph.D., on behalf of the Atlanta Behavioral Health Advocates

I recently spoke to a local high school classroom full of Gen Z students (affectionately known as “Zoomers”) about the importance of taking care of one’s own mental health and supporting others with mental health concerns.

Part of the discussion centered around the use of language, and I presented several examples of common mental health slang—menty b, stressy depressy, triggered, gaslighting—garnering a few chuckles and lots of head nods. When I asked what the risk might be with using these words in casual conversation, the class showed an admirable level of self-awareness: It makes it sound like it’s not something serious. It may not really be true to say it.

This suggests the understanding is there. Yet the language persists. Why?

The History of Therapy-Speak

While Zoomers have gotten a lot of negative attention for their casual use of language that appropriates—or more commonly, misappropriates—psychological ideas and terminology (a phenomenon known as “therapy-speak”), they are not the first to use slang concerning mental health. Such language has been around for generations (e.g., “insane,” “crazy”).

One significant change that has occurred over the decades is not that we use slang or therapy-speak, but how we use it. Unlike the coming-of-age environment of Baby Boomers, Gen X, or elder Millennials, Gen Z and their successors, Gen Alpha, are spending their childhood and adolescence in a perpetual state of technology and connectedness. What one teen says in Albuquerque can be known by thousands of teens in Baltimore—not just on the same day but within the hour. And like a nationwide game of telephone, terminology that may have begun with a very specific meaning grows into something broader or altogether different over time.

Take “gaslighting” as an example. The origin of the concept comes from the 1938 play "Gas Light," in which a husband uses the brightening and dimming of lights to convince his wife that she is mentally ill. The word gaslighting was first printed in 1995 by the New York Times, used only sparingly for the next two decades, and then named a Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society in 2016 following a surge in popularity of the term during the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle (Yagoda, 2017). Once a specific term referring to a meticulously planned attempt to make a person believe that they cannot trust their own senses, gaslighting is now often used in the common vernacular to refer to essentially any attempt to deny one’s previous words or actions or disagree with another person.

It is the nature of language that word usage changes over time; we no longer mean that something causes terror when we say “terrific.” We can see this shift within academic conversations as well. “Diagnostic overshadowing” is a term originally describing the misattribution of a psychological issue to an intellectual disability, but over time has expanded and changed to indicate the misattribution of physical symptoms to psychosomatic symptoms, symptoms of one mental disorder to another, and symptoms of one physical disorder to another (Hallyburton, 2022). When language shifts from academic conversations to social media, we face a different kind of challenge.

Does Therapy-Speak on Social Media Help or Harm?

In recent years, a significant amount of research has sought to understand the relationship between social media use and adolescent mental health. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory acknowledging the potentially harmful impact of social media use on adolescents (The Office of the Surgeon General, 2023). More specifically, while some use of social media may contribute to increased social support, it may also contribute to increased social liability, or feelings of obligation to support others, which can in turn significantly contribute to experiences of loneliness, anxiety, and anger (Cho et al., 2023).

Person Holding a Megaphone

Source: Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a significant increase in the occurrence of therapy-speak on social media platforms like TikTok. An analysis conducted by PlushCare, a virtual healthcare company, found that the majority of TikTok videos offering mental health advice were misleading, potentially harmful, and/or provided by unqualified content creators (PlushCare Content Team, 2025).

As this worldwide game of telephone persists across social media platforms, we can see specific terminology, diagnostic criteria, and even therapeutic interventions twisted into unrecognizable shapes. Increased attention to the topics discussed in casual online conversation or targeted content may lead society to find itself caught in a positive feedback loop of awareness, recognition, overinterpretation, and both accurately and artificially inflated prevalence of mental health diagnoses (Foulkes & Andrews, 2023).

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While increased awareness can lead to the appropriate identification of individuals with mental health diagnoses that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks, it also has more insidious power. This awareness can dilute the meaning of a diagnosis (e.g., “everyone’s a little bit on the spectrum”), minimizing the experiences of individuals with significant mental health challenges.

Heightened awareness can also prompt a self-fulfilling prophecy in which someone over-identifies normative struggles as indicative of a mental health concern, changes their self-image, and unwittingly increases the likelihood of ultimately being diagnosed with a mental health concern.

What Can Be Done?

This sounds dire, but there are several ways we can mitigate these effects. As consumers of and contributors to social media:

• Be mindful of the sources of the content we consume
• Limit time spent engaging with social media that overinterprets normative experiences as symptoms of a mental health concern

As members of society:

• Educate ourselves on what our words mean so we can be mindful of our usage
• Support loved ones with mental health concerns and direct them to appropriate resources for professional support (e.g., 988 or behavioral health services)

As psychologists:

• Create and share accurate psychoeducation on social media
• Engage in collaborative discussions with our clients who may be misusing psychological terminology (e.g., “You say you felt triggered. What does that word mean to you?”)
• Engage with the production and consumption of research that explores the impact of language, social media, and awareness efforts on mental health in youth and adults

Language matters and is constantly changing; let’s do what we can to keep up!