25 young people making noise for social progress

Elyse Fox

Mental health advocate Elyse Fox started the Sad Girls Club to help millennials combat the stigma surrounding mental health. And it’s helped a lot of women get the support they need.

Fox had struggled with depression, but always felt unable to talk about it due to the stigma around mental health issues. Her depression was officially diagnosed back in 2016, and the Instagram star and filmmaker started the Sad Girls Club not long after that. She had also created a film called Conversations with Friends, which is about mental health.

The Sad Girls Club is a place for women to go for support for their mental health issues. Fox also livestreams meetings with a licensed clinical social worker. She’s also talked about the importance of social media and Instagram for the Sad Girls Club and how it can give people something to turn to, a way to feel supported and the sense that they’re not the only ones going through this.

Fox wanted to give women a place to go if they needed resources as well as a way to destigmatize mental health and show women that they aren’t alone. This was especially important for women of color, who are more likely to have symptoms of mental illness, but less likely to get help.

“I think there’s a different dynamic for women of color and mental health,” Fox told Women’s Health. “I wasn’t labeled as someone going through things, I was labeled as the angry black woman when that wasn’t the case. I just had a chemical imbalance in my brain.”