The Creative Way Instagram Is Starting a Conversation About Mental Health

Living with a mental illness isn't something that ever goes away or gets easier to deal with. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Instagram is choosing to celebrate those who talk about mental illness and keep the conversation going with a new campaign called #HereForYou.

The campaign, launched on May 8, will showcase different accounts, stories, and hashtags that talk about mental health on the app through #HereForYou. In a video, different advocates like Elyse Fox, who started Sad Girls Club, talk about how they've used Instagram to help themselves or someone else. At the end, different supportive hashtags are highlighted, like #MentalHealthMatters and #EDWarriors.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness states that 43.8 million adults in the US "experience a mental illness in a given year." A campaign like Instagram's shows that social media, often blamed as the root of several issues like bullying, are trying to help its users out.

This isn't the only change Instagram is implanting to help those in need; the app launched a feature in October 2016 that lets users anonymously report someone who posts something alarming. If something someone posts gets reported, the user will see a series of options, like calling a hotline, when they open the app again.

It's small steps like these that make social media a nicer community and one that makes them feel less judgmental.