The Impact of Cyberbullying on Help-Seeking Among Depressed Young adults in the United States

Online discourse about mental health frequently triggers targeted harassment and cyberbullying behaviors. Using text mining, this study examined the prevalence and nature of cyberbullying directed at young adults sharing depression content on TikTok in the U.S. Analysis of 83,154 comments from 50 TikTok videos revealed that non-cyberbullying comments occurred significantly more than expected (92.2% vs. 7.8%). Among cyberbullying behaviors, supportive comments dominated responses (53.51%), followed by harmful comments (17.68%) and dismissive comments (15.91%). Sentiment analysis revealed predominantly neutral responses. These findings demonstrate that while overt cyberbullying remains relatively infrequent on TikTok's mental health content, the cyberbullying that does occur encompasses complex patterns requiring targeted intervention strategies to protect vulnerable individuals seeking mental health support online.