Patrick’s Politics: The mental health crisis demands more than the Ice Bucket Challenge

The videos are all over the internet: People dumping ice water over their heads and nominating their friends to do the same, all in the name of raising awareness for mental health. All of a sudden, the internet traveled back in time to 2014, when the first Ice Bucket Challenge swept the nation. I was nominated in the past few days and did the challenge. We all dutifully put up the links to Active Minds, the organization which this revived trend originated from, echoing the hashtag “SpeakYourMIND”. However, while I was posting my contribution to the challenge on my Instagram story, I felt deeply troubled about its superficiality. The issue with the Ice Bucket Challenge, noble as it may seem, is that participating doesn’t mean anything substantial.  

The first problematic aspect of the trend is how little it demands of people to be armchair activists. The challenge presents raising awareness for mental health issues as something that can be easily accomplished in five minutes. All you need is a bucket with ice water and you’re all set! While you’re at it, make sure you nominate your friends so you can have a good laugh about how cold the water was together. Congratulations, you’ve just made the world a better place. After people press the like button on your story, you’ll surely know you made a difference.  

All of this is artificial, and it risks transforming the purpose of raising awareness into a simple social media trend. As I kept watching video after video of icy water raining down, I noticed that, besides the hashtags, very few people actually mentioned mental health while recording. The lack of promoting the cause should be expected, though; viral trends and social media are not built for engaging in discussion, only engagement itself. Trends feed off the ability of others to see and pass them on. This is why people have been nominating their friends without fail; it is an especially effective way to reach greater numbers of people. As more videos are posted, trends snowball—and the Ice Bucket Challenge is a trend first and foremost. 

This is not to say that the current Ice Bucket Challenge has done nothing. According to Active Minds, more than $300,000 has been raised at the time of writing due to the attention. But now we turn to an even greater problem: Will the overall goal of raising awareness for mental health make a real, tangible impact?  

In the case of 2014’s Ice Bucket Challenge, which raised money and awareness for the deadly disease ALS, the trend did have a noticeable impact. More than $115 million was raised, and revolutionary treatments were later introduced. At the time, not many Americans knew what ALS was, as the disease is quite rare, occurring in 9.1 per 100,000 people. However, mental health is a much different crisis. A 2019 poll from the American Psychological Association found that a majority of Americans already view mental health problems as “nothing to be ashamed of.” This openness to discussing the issue has emerged as one in five Americans suffer from mental health issues themselves, and these cases are just the ones that have been documented. 

Awareness plays a part, but in order to make a more tangible impact, efforts to improve the mental health of our nation need to focus on care. Even though so many Americans, especially young people, are struggling with mental health—in 2021, 22% of high school students seriously contemplated suicide—there are still major barriers to accessing treatment. One of these barriers stems from how over half of U.S counties don’t have a psychiatrist, who help patients receive a diagnosis for mental illness.  

Even when people do find care, it can be very expensive. Many insurance companies don’t cover mental health care expenses and exclude therapists from their networks, meaning therapists and psychiatrists often don’t accept insurance. In a case highlighted by ProPublica in 2023, a man named Ravi Coutinho committed suicide after several fruitless months of trying to find a therapist through his insurance provider.  

Unlike most of the topics I discuss in this column, mental health is usually seen as a bipartisan issue. Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats have expressed a desire to address the mental health crisis and improve access to care. This hasn’t exactly translated to elected officials, especially in the Republican Party, but there is broad consensus among the American people for change.  

That appetite for change, which would require significant overhauls to how both companies and the government tackle mental health, cannot be sustained with only the use of the Ice Bucket Challenge. While it’s a fun trend, the current mental health crisis in America demands more than cold water and the five seconds of attention we give each viral video on social media.