We have known for a long time that some forms of mental illness can spread through social networks. Suicidal thinking and behavior is an example.
No one had an explanation for why the onset of gender dysphoria was most common in young boys for decades, but suddenly it changed dramatically to onset among teen girls. One suggestion was social contagion due to social media.
Is there recent research supporting the concept of social contagion of some mental illness? Yes, according to research by Alho and colleagues who published their research on this topic, published in JAMA Psychiatry on May 22, 2024.
They studied over 700,000 people in Finland using a national database. They found that “having classmates diagnosed with a mental disorder in the ninth grade of comprehensive school was associated with increased risk of receiving a mental disorder diagnosis later in life.”
This “increased risk remained after adjusting for an array of parental, school-level, and area-level confounders.” This means that there was no evidence that some other factor explained the results of the research.
The researchers concluded that “the findings of this study suggest that mental disorders might be socially transmitted within adolescent peer networks.”
If you are interested in reading the original research paper, type this into a search engine such as Google:
doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1126
Peter M. Hartmann, MD
Family Medicine & Psychiatry
