Meet the TikTok therapists offering free mental health advice to millions

Shani Tran likes to twerk in her videos while she lip-syncs. Julie Smith loves using props she finds around the house. Kojo Sarfo’s go-to TikTok routine is a one-man sketch filmed from a propped-up smartphone in his kitchen.

Such techniques might sound like the familiar trademarks of a Gen-Z TikToker, but Tran, Smith and Sarfo are far from your normal social media influencers – or certainly not the types you find pranking their parents or posting #sponsoredads all over their grids. These particular influencers are all part of a growing wave of qualified mental health professionals using TikTok to broadcast their therapy advice to millions – completely for free.

“It’s about trying to draw people in,” says Smith, 37, a former NHS therapist and mother-of-three who’s just published her first book after becoming the UK’s first TikTok therapist during the first coronavirus lockdown. Her fellow therap-influencers around the world agree – TikTok can be a vital tool for accessing digital-savvy younger generations who might not be able to afford traditional therapy from an (often overly-priced) armchair. “Our videos provide psychoeducation and information that may be completely inaccessible to them at this time in their lives,” says Dr Courtney Tracy, a certified psychologist in Los Angeles with 1.7 million TikTok followers. She sees her main audience as people who are “going against the traditional model of therapy and seeking someone to really tell it like it is”.

Tracy, Smith and their fellow TikTok therapists’ broadcasts might not be a substitute for actual therapy – and they don’t claim to be. But their 60-second mental health lessons and whipsmart therapy tips might just leave viewers with a useful - even lifesaving - nugget of advice that’ll reframe the way they think about their anxiety, stress levels or relationship breakdown. Don’t just take our word for it – take theirs (warning: their peppy remixes might just get stuck in your head for days). Meet the TikTok therapists.

The self-help guru: Dr Julie Smith

Follower count: 3 million (@drjuliesmith)

Subjects covered: Stress, burnout, grief, relationships, anxiety, depression, loneliness

Julie Smith is the psychology teacher you wish you’d had at school. The glamorous qualified clinical psychologist and former NHS therapist began sharing self-help tips (and catchy dance remixes) under her @drjuliesmith handle shortly before the start of the pandemic and since then she’s amassed more than three million followers, 35 million likes and a lucrative Michael Joseph book deal – not bad for a busy mother-of-three and full-time therapist filming videos from the kitchen in her Hampshire home.

“It’s about trying to draw people in,” says Smith, insisting she doesn’t just receive messages about her videos from Gen Z-ers scrolling in their bedrooms, but parents, teachers and even grandparents thanking her for giving them or their loved one an inspirational boost. Some even say her videos have saved their life.

Smith says she feels it’s her “calling” to release daily content because of these messages, and they’re one of the reasons she decided to release a book. Her new self-help manual, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? , came out last week and is a step-by-step guide divided up into chapters on all the real life problems many of us face, from a low mood and a lack of motivation to stress or grief - an emotion many of her followers are feeling after a year or losing loved ones, relationships, livelihoods or businesses as a result of the pandemic. “When you’re struggling with something, the last thing you want to do is read a book cover to cover looking for advice, so I’ve made it as easy as possible to dip in and get insights from therapy on the problems you face today,” she says.

USP: Fun facts. Smith’s clips are just as informative as they are therapeutic – her grid is littered with fascinating myth-busters, brain facts and psychology tests, from 30-second mind challenges set to Top-40 hits to a clip demonstrating the Thatcher Effect using pictures of Adele and Obama. You’ll feel better and learn at the same time.

The mental health myth-buster: Dr Courtney Tracy

Follower count: 1.7 million (@the.truth.doctor)

Subjects covered: Childhood trauma, emotional abuse, anxiety, addiction, mood swings, borderline depression

Recovered addict Dr Courtney Tracy isn’t exaggerating when she says she wants to go against the traditional model of therapy – her TikTok grid features clips of her listing the drugs she used to do, stripping down to sexy leather outfits to share health tips, and rapping her advice as she mimics a phone call to a parent (in summary: she thinks parents need to listen to their children more). Clearly, Tracy’s straight-talking, “no-BS” approach works: the California-based clinical social worker and psychologist hit a million followers in December 2020 and had almost doubled that number by the end of 2021, with 90 per cent of her fans being women between the ages of 18 and 34.

Tracy says burnout, anxiety and anxiety are all at an all-time high among her followers, but new themes have also emerged in the last year, including a lack of identity and autopilot or dissociation.

“So many people are now realizing that the job, the marriage, the location they find themselves in is actually not what is best serving them,” she says. “They’re also realising that they have created a life around them based on habits, behavioral patterns, and psychological decisions that they didn’t realise they’d developed. They are changing their minds about what they like, what they don’t, what they want, and what they don’t. It’s a cultural makeover, and I’m here for it.“

USP: A cross-platform approach. Alongside 1.7 million followers on TikTok, Tracy also has 128,000 Instagram followers, 10,500 YouTube subscribers, 200,000 podcast downloads and a community of 5,000 clients she texts multiple times a week with mental health reminders. She is currently writing her first book, Your Unconscious Is Showing.

The ADHD doctor: Dr Kojo Sarfo

Follower count: 1.9 million (@dr.kojosarfo)

Subjects covered: ADHD, depression, bipolar, boundaries, PTSD, anxiety, body dysmorphia

You might have got your head around managing your own ADHD but how do you manage dating someone who has it? This is just one of the more complicated questions that Ghanaian-American mental health nurse Dr Kojo Sarfo aims to tackle in his viral TikToks videos (the answer to this particular question: “understand that their brain is a little different, do your best to avoid parenting them, compliment them on the things they do well”).

The hunky Hollywood author has ADHD himself and is on a mission to debunk myths about it, sharing useful nuggets on the signs and symptoms to look out for and how to manage them – his TikToks cover everything from growing up with ADHD to how the disorder impacts sex (apparently it can affect your drive and ability to orgasm).

Sarfo’s grid also features plenty of non-ADHD-related material too, from anxiety relief tips to advice on dating with a low confidence.

USP: Dating advice. Sarfo’s clips on relationships and mental health have been watched as many as 856,000 times.

The trauma coach: Micheline Maalouf

Follower count: 1.1 million (@micheline.maalouf)

Subjects covered: Trauma, anxiety, PTSD, boundaries, people-pleasing

Florida-based Micheline Maalouf knows a hell of a lot about anxiety and PTSD – because she struggles with both herself. The Arab-American licensed trauma therapist says clients regularly tell her they’re dubious about a therapist who suffers with mental health conditions but she believes they’re her superpower: they gives her genuine empathy and she can draw on personal experience, which she documents in regular mental updates on her grid (the latest: she’s still in therapy herself).

“I have been in the darkest time of my life... and it feels bad but good,” she tells followers in a recent clip about overcoming five years of emotional “numbness”.

Mixed in among Maalouf’s therapy videos are poems she’s written as part of her healing process, explainers on why childhood trauma leads to mental health problems in adulthood, and and examples of mental health symptoms to look for, whether it’s five signs of unresolved trauma or nine signs of dissociation.

USP: Practical exercises. Maalouf’s TikTok is packed with handy therapy hacks you can do at home, from clever tools for stopping nail biting to activating the vagus nerve for reducing anxiety. Her butterfly tapping technique for quelling panic attacks has been viewed more than seven million times.

The anxiety expert: Shani Tran

Follower count: 338,000 (@theshaniproject)

Subjects covered: Anxiety, racial trauma, financial trauma, childhood trauma, self-esteem

Don’t expect a curated reel of lipstick-wearing selfie videos: Shani Tran prefers a more down-to-earth approach than other therapists on TikTok, dancing in her gym kit and dressing gown, sitting in her car while she answers fans’ questions, and acting out scenarios from her sun lounger on holiday.

The Minnesota-based licensed mental health professional started her TikTok in January 2020 because she loved to dance and quickly realised there was a demand for her “eccentric” approach to therapy – particularly among women between 24 and 35 – whether its looking her followers in the eye and telling them to stop waiting to break up with their partner until after the holidays or dancing her way through three tips for parents to help a child who is anxious.

(“Let them chew something like gum, show them how to take deep breaths, walk away if you’re frustrated”). Her book comes out this summer.

USP: Inclusivity. Tran says one of the reasons she likes TikTok is because it’s a safe space for people of colour. Among her therapy videos are clips on racial trauma, how to be an ally and why cultural competency is important among therapists more widely (see: her clip from last April on trying to pronounce a client’s name).