Corinne Byerley, a stay-at-home mom, recalled days when she felt lonely, overwhelmed and, at times, paralyzed with anxiety and self-doubt.
Byerley, who had neither health insurance nor money for psychotherapy, said she was intrigued hearing a former MTV star talk up Lexapro on a podcast in 2023. She searched for the drug on TikTok, her go-to information source, and found #lexaprotok and similar niche online communities, where women in their 20s and 30s praised the benefits of antidepressants.
She posted a video asking for help, and someone recommended Hers, a telehealth company. Byerley answered a questionnaire, and an online nurse practitioner prescribed a generic version of Lexapro. A bottle arrived days later.
Byerley, of Canton, Texas, posted TikTok videos of herself running to the mailbox for a pill package and taking a dose, using such hashtags as #lexaprobaddies and #gethelpmama. In the months that followed, she gushed over the pills to her thousands of followers.
For a time, Byerley belonged to a social-media movement that has given antidepressants a makeover -- from a stigmatized medicine to a healthy lifestyle accessory for enlightened and empowered young women.
Millennial and GenZ influencers, some paid by telehealth companies, evangelize antidepressants on TikTok and Instagram using such hashtags as #livelaughlexapro, #lexaprogirly, #lexaho and #zoloftgang, recasting the medications as pop-culture touchstones.
On TikTok, #antidepressants has surpassed 1.3 billion views. Views for #lexapro have more than tripled since 2022, surpassing 500 million, according to an analysis of data from analytics firm Exolyt by The Wall Street Journal. User shares per video tagged #ssri also nearly quadrupled from 2022 to 2025.
Byerley, 34, touted benefits of the medicine, but later felt emotionally numb, had brain fog and a loss of libido, she said. Byerley held off telling followers for months, reluctant to acknowledge her faded sex life and embarrassed about gaining weight.
The nurse practitioner who prescribed the medication had told Byerley initially that "any side effects are generally mild and usually subside quickly."
At first, Byerley made light of some of the side effects, telling TikTok followers that, "overall, I feel like I'm doing really well."
Antidepressant use in the U.S. grew during the pandemic, especially among young women in their 20s and early 30s, according to studies and a Journal analysis of 2023 federal data.
Social-media chatter about the medications went viral around the same time.
On TikTok, views per video with any one of the top four antidepressant-related hashtags all grew sharply from 2022 to 2025, according to a Journal analysis of Exolyt data. Likes, shares, and comments per video also rose. Positive posts with each of the four top hashtags on TikTok outnumber negative ones by almost two to one, Exolyt data show.
Many people have been helped by antidepressants, the most common of which are so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, including sertraline, also known as Zoloft, and escitalopram -- brand name Lexapro. They have been on the market so long that grandparents, parents and children in the same family now take them.
Yet the rosy picture painted by cheerleading TikTok and Instagram influencers glosses over potential adverse effects. Some suffered side effects that diminished rather than enriched their lives but kept quiet about it on social media.
Antidepressants are portrayed by influencers and in online ads as lifestyle medications, said Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist and former FDA official who runs an online clinic to help patients taper off psychiatric medications and minimize withdrawal symptoms. "People know their favorite celebrity who's taking them."
Yet mental health, he said, is about more than taking a pill.
Influencer Alix Earle, who has 7.7 million followers on TikTok, disclosed in a December 2022 video that she has been on Lexapro for anxiety since high school.
In the video, which got 6.1 million views, the 24-year-old shook a prescription bottle of pills and urged watchers to talk to a therapist if they have similar symptoms.
A representative for Earle said she wasn't available for comment.
Another 24-year-old woman in the U.K. told the Journal she had given up on antidepressants after trying them twice and feeling nothing but emotional numbness and sexual dysfunction. She decided to try a third time after watching Earle talk about the pills in a way that made them seem no more risky than prescription glasses, she said. The medication again delivered no relief, the woman said, but instead set off cognitive problems and emotional numbness that continue more than a year later.
Only 15% of people with major depression experienced a substantial benefit from taking antidepressants beyond the placebo effect of pills that look like real medication, a 2022 study found. The findings were based on participants in 232 antidepressant randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials submitted by drug developers to the Food and Drug Administration from 1979 to 2016.
Most people who take antidepressants feel better only because they are taking a pill, said Dr. Marc Stone, a former FDA official and the study's lead author. Large improvements, however, are much more likely from the drug than a placebo, he said. Scientists don't yet understand who will benefit from the drug.
The potential benefit of antidepressants has to be weighed against such risks as sexual dysfunction and withdrawal effects, including anxiety and restlessness, Stone said. "My biggest concern is having the discipline to say, 'Let's stop the drug if you're not having a major improvement,'" he said.
The ease of obtaining antidepressants online -- and the sometimes limited follow-up by telehealth providers -- mean patients might take the drugs longer than they need to, some psychiatrists say. The median length of antidepressant treatment in the U.S. is five years, one study found, despite limited evidence about the effectiveness of such long-term use.
A recent study found that nearly two-thirds of patients on antidepressants for more than two years had moderate or severe withdrawal symptoms.
Mackenzie Tidwell, 24, describes herself as a proud Zoloft consumer on TikTok. She posts videos sharing about her anxiety and medication with more than 5,700 followers while dancing, putting on makeup and sipping Starbucks.
The Murfreesboro, Tenn., resident, a case manager for foster children, started taking Zoloft in April and said she feels better. Tidwell had struggled with anxiety, depression and disturbing thoughts -- for instance, that someone had poisoned her water bottle.
In July, Tidwell posted a video titled "Zoloft chit chat" and said her side effects had been mild -- tiredness and nausea for a few days when she started and when she upped her dose.
"If you're seeing, like, crazy horror stories online don't assume that that's going to happen to you," she said. "I've had a great experience so far. Don't let social media scare you."
Telehealth companies, including Hims & Hers Health, have tapped into the burst of online enthusiasm and made it easier than ever for patients to try antidepressants.
Some influencers who speak highly of their antidepressants are paid sponsorship fees by some of the same companies they recommend to followers. The financial ties are typically disclosed with such hashtags as #herspartner, along with #ad or #sponsored.
Hims & Hers has plowed more than $521 million into digital marketing since 2021, with Hers -- the business unit aimed at women -- spending a significant chunk on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, according to estimates from MediaRadar, an ad-tracking firm.
Hers advertises "Depression Meds from Your Sofa" for women and offers a "Balance Blend Rx," which mixes an antidepressant with supplements for stress and better sleep.
Hims & Hers said it serves patients with mild-to-moderate depression or anxiety. Medical guidelines in the U.S. generally recommend psychotherapy, medication or a combination to treat mild or moderate depression.
The company ran an influencer campaign in 2022 and 2023 that targeted young women with a simple message: Don't be ashamed to take medications for depression and anxiety. Hims & Hers paid between $3,000 and $10,000 to influencers for making Instagram and TikTok posts, a person familiar with the deals said.
"We're proud that these efforts have helped people connect with qualified clinicians and get the care they need," a Hims & Hers spokesperson said.
The company said its platform's medical providers, who include nurse practitioners and doctors, prescribe medication only when necessary. The providers also are trained to help patients taper off and stop medications, the company said, and the platform allows for unlimited messaging between patients and their care team.
The medication had numbed her sex drive and caused her to sweat profusely in her sleep, Okamoto said. On a podcast a few months after her paid posts for Hers, she skewered the medical profession for pushing antidepressants.
Psychiatrists would ask if she had been feeling sad or anxious, Okamoto said, and almost automatically leaned toward increasing her dose. They made her feel as if she were "expected to be numb and emotionless," she said, rather than acknowledging that sadness is sometimes just part of being human.
"It feels like I'm just putting on a lot of Band-Aids," she said in the podcast, instead of "pushing myself to just really address the problem at the root cause."
Okamoto, 27, said she worked with Hers because the medication was initially life-changing. She is getting married next year, she said, and eventually wants to quit antidepressants because she doesn't want to take them while pregnant. Okamoto credited exercise, yoga and other therapies such as acupuncture for helping while she reduces her dose.
In 2019, Ariella Sharf revealed to her Instagram followers that she had been taking antidepressants to cope with anxiety and depression. Without Zoloft, "I struggle silently," posted Sharf, who has been taking antidepressants since college.
The 32-year-old now has a different message for her 6,500 followers: The pills she credits with saving her life also "nearly broke me," Sharf said.
Zoloft made her emotionally numb, took away her appetite and left her sweaty and sleepy, she said in an interview. Her doctors never discussed taking her off the medication. "It was just, like, 'You need this like a diabetic needs insulin,'" she said.
Sharf decided last year to taper off Zoloft. In recent months, she described on Instagram her body shakes, dizziness, "nausea creeping up my throat," and "eyes and lips drier than the Sahara desert."
"Emotionally, mentally, and physically excruciating in ways that make no sense," she wrote at the end of July.
"It's really beautiful to see people talking about how hard they are to come off of," she told the Journal. "A lot of doctors don't believe it can be as bad as it can be."
She hears from followers suffering similar pains. "They're so glad they found somebody talking about it," she said. "They feel less alone."