Understanding and reducing teen mental health stigma through teen-created art on social media

Mental health stigma is a major issue for teenagers, often stopping them from asking for help and causing misunderstandings among peers. Traditional programs like school presentations, guest speakers, and workshops led by mental health professionals usually give information and suggest solutions. While these programs can help, their effects are often short-term. Studies and examples of teen-created content on social media suggest that art can provide a different approach. It allows teens to share and represent experiences in more interesting ways. This paper looks at how teen-created art on platforms like Instagram can reduce mental health stigma and whether it can be more engaging and inclusive than traditional programs. For this project, a comic was created and posted online, and had its engagement tracked over one week. The post received positive responses from peers and health-related accounts, showing that even small-scale teen-created content can connect with audiences. These findings suggest that teen-created art can make mental health topics more visible, and shared among peers. This paper concludes that encouraging teens to create and share their own art can improve anti-stigma efforts by making them more personal and engaging. Others can contribute by creating similar content, using social media to reach wider audiences and helping expand conversation about mental health among teens.